Rolled 81 (1d100)

You scroll and scroll. You don't regret the choice that lead you to this position, even looking at the dismal prospects you have for the rest of your life you know you'd take on the loans again if you were transported into the past. That's what you do when your only family in the world is sick...but in the end the operation hadn't been successful, and you'd functionally mortgaged your life in order to spend a few more months with your mom.
At least you actually have a choice of where you end up, having made sure to stick to the legitimate lenders even though criminal syndicates often offered better rates...but harsh methods of recovering their investments if necessary. The differences between legal and illegal debt slavery are subtle but infinitely important.

As you continue scrolling grimly, sipping out of a cup of recaff that went cold sometime yesterday, you see a header that catches your eye and click on it to read more. Just posted a few minutes ago, a position as a...tester for a Full Dive VRMMO? Open to everyone. You'd known that tech had been been advancing by leaps and bounds lately but not that it'd gotten to the point where even the chromeless could engage in something of such luxury, which was the main thing holding back the metaverse from becoming the onlyverse. As you continue down the sales pitch your sense of suspicion only grows stronger. It's all positives, even including skill training, a generous compensation scheme, and full health coverage. Ohhh man, that is sooooooo fuckin sketch. Exactly the sort of thing an actual corpo marketeer would think debtors would go for in a heartbeat...which paradoxically, also gave the offer some degree of credibility.

Looking once more over your options, you shrug. Even if it's overwhelmingly likely to be some sort of horrific torment nexus they've invented and want to test out of unsuspecting debtors that don't have much opportunity for legal recourse, at least this way there's a chance you won't end up in a literal meatgrinder. You click on the accept button, and seal your f̷a̶t̶e̵.

Rolled 52 (1d100)

>>5509148

Scant few hours later you're being led through clinical white hallways by one of the prettier girls you've ever seen in real life. Raven black hair cut immaculately to frame her face, and a gaze that seems to mesmerize your soul no matter what you thought your sexuality was, really the only thing that ruins the effect is the loose white labcoat she's wearing and the fact the words that are coming out of her mouth as she walks towards where ever your destination is in this damned featureless maze of hallways. Finally you stop in front of a double-door made of satin-finished grey steel, just the same as any number of other double-doors you've already passed in the past few minutes.

"So, to review, you will not be able to exit unless you find a special altar and make an appropriate offering. Upon logging out, all your equipment will be converted to schematics that we will happily purchase from you and apply the value of to your debts. Any value in excess of that will be applied to your personal account...though it appears you probably won't need to worry about that. In the meantime, I advise you to search for one of the player haven-cities and not to lose your Identifier. Any questions?"

"Seems kind of strange to restrict logging out in an MMO, and to pay me for schematics pulled out of your own game. What's the deal with that?"

The woman looks at you for a moment and you note that her eyes seem to have changed color from earlier...no wait, actually they're just reflecting the color of the steel doors now, as if the irises were made of mirrors. Strange, they don't bear any of the other hallmarks of being augs. Guess the high end shit is really better than you'd ever imagined. Oh right, you were so distracted you almost forgot she's answering your question.

"Just incentives we've given to the testers to make sure they stay in. Any other questions?"

Pffft, okay maybe 'answering your question' was a bit of a stretch to assume. Anyway, it doesn't hardly make a difference. You're going in one way or the other. You shake your head to indicate that whether you have questions or not you won't be asking them of her right now, and she gives you a nod before walking away. As she does, the double doors slide open and you're greeted by the sight of a reclining chair in the middle of an otherwise featureless blank room about of about 10' square, illuminated by some sort of recessed light above the chair. You sigh, resigned, and make yourself comfortable in the chair. After you get yourself situated and comfortable, wondering what comes next, you realize that what's above you is not in fact a recessed light but rather a mirror-finish silver teardrop that is somehow emitting the soft ambient glow that illuminates the room. For a moment the teardrop is perfectly smooth, unnaturally so, the curvature and reflectiveness both so pristine and painfully precise that you feel like it shouldn't exist in the real world.

Rolled 87 (1d100)

>>5509149

Then ripples form in the skin of the teardrop and a single droplet falls from the center. You see it in flight briefly, an immaculate fractal version of the larger drop it just emerged from, then the drop splashes onto your forehead. You feel a sensation that it kept falling or perhaps immediately burrowed through your skin and skull, before the drop reaches your brain and you are engulfed by an indescribable agony. The last thing you see before you pass out is the teardrop above smoothing out its wrinkles and growing dark. You can't tell if the darkness is from it ceasing to glow or from the pain causing you to lose your vision.

=====

Next thing you know you're lost in darkness, a formless and tenebrous nebula. The searing agony of your brain is gone...in fact, you can't feel any of your limbs. As you float in the middle of tenebrous nothing, white letters appear in your vision.

>Greetings, User.
>Please register your name for access to [[BROKEN VESSELS ONLINE]]
[[Name]]
>Please Select your Avatar
[[Male/Female]] Describe your appearance

Current Cerebral Commitment/Capacity: [0/100]

>Please select your Primary Archetype.
>Primary Archetypes (Please note that these upgrades in the game will be reflected on the User's physical self, Select [1])

[[Organitech]] - A biological specialist, astute in manipulation of organic organisms of all sorts and for all purposes. Second only to Edgerunners for raw
combat potential. Reqs: [25 Cerebral Commitment]

[[Techseer]] - Where the Organitech can bend flesh to their will and purposes, a Technician prefers to use mechanics and circuitry. The Technician is also the premier class
for crafting and utilitarian roles, as well as being a master of cybernetic augmentation. Reqs: [25 Cerebral Commitment]

[[Netrunner]] - Wizards of cyberspace, surgeons of software rather than circuitry. It's no exaggeration to say that advanced Netrunners are like gods when in
their element, but such specialization only applies when there's tech around to be manipulated. Reqs: [30 Cerebral Commitment]

[[Edgerunner]] - Edgerunners eschew the intangible benefits of the specialist classes in exchange for becoming death incarnate in combat. Though there's little they can do that
the other classes couldn't duplicate with effort, none of them have it as condensed and easily accessible. Reqs: [15 Cerebral Commitment]

File: bfede0817cb7eacd17f691bfa(...).jpg (49 KB, 564x658)

49 KB JPG

>>5509150
>Name
Corpse Warblade
>Avatar
Yes
>Primary Archetype
[[Edgerunner]]

File: Freedomw.png (320 KB, 343x889)

320 KB PNG

>>5509150
Grievefang.
Male.
Organitech.
Appearance is pic related.

>>5509149
Broken Sky copycat? I'm up for it.

>>5509150
Name...
>Sibylla

Avatar...
>Female, looks like the woman we just met.

Archetype...
>[[Organitech]]

Seems a good mix of combat potential and specialization for independent access to crafting features or the versatility required to act as a service provider aside from that of a beatstick.

Rolled 65 (1d100)

>>5509166
Heavily inspired by broken sky, but hopefully quite distinct as well.

Some of still believe in you, Sylv

Rolled 75 (1d100)

Goin with first to...3 or 5 depending on how lively it gets or dead it remains, or whatever's consensus if I go to bed and wake up to plenty of votes.

>>5509150
Lestat

Male - pal, lean, and eyes sunk in. Hoping to get a away with looking weak and pull out the hard hits with out power. To mod apprience later for when that trick loses it's worth.

[[Organitech]]
Believe in the temple that is one's body. Plus being a flesh crafter could be fun and I can pull from the VTM or exalted for ideas.

Rolled 93 (1d100)

>>5509210
To help with first to 3. I'm fine with other names and appearance. The primary is my main goal. That being said I do love my back up idea. crafting robots for the machine uprising.

>>5509211
>>5509216
Didn't think my ip would change that fast. Can't remember how to name tag, but if done correctly. I'll do it to prove me.

>>5509218
Class is the main choice, name and appearance will either be what's most agreed on or whichever one I like the best. Can't expect a horde of anons to agree on something so broad.

>>5509150
>Paul

>Male

>Organitech

Rolled 99 (1d100)

>>5509153
>>5509165
>>5509166
>>5509211
>>5509224

>Organitech - 4
>Edgerunner - 1

Good enough for me, writan'

File: D68DE11E-1AAD-4219-9E64-6(...).jpg (253 KB, 1000x1739)

253 KB JPG

>>5509150

Name...
>Sibylla

Avatar...
>Morgan Kell

Archetype...
>[[Techseer]]

Rolled 76 (1d100)

>>5509150

You analyze the options and their descriptions for a bit, pondering. It's an interesting mixture as none of the archetypes have the calling cards of the usual RPG trio of roles. Edgerunner catches your eye for a moment. Regardless of any twists on the formula you can always be guaranteed to find violence in a game like this, and so being a master of combat will inevitably be of benefit. As you focus on the archetype a short video begins to play next to the text. A figure dressed in clearly armored black garb with a vicious oni-mask sprints through a corridor filled with vicious looking pale humanoids. As he gets within reach of the creatures they reach out with clawed limbs to grasp at him, but instead of being caught he jumps up to the ceiling, and then proceeds to corkscrew and tumble through the crowd while avoiding every strike directed at him. Once on the other side of the group, he looks back and pulls on an infinitesimally small wire you hadn't been able to see up to this point, and a moment later the heads of every one of the creatures falls off with a fountain of blood.

Oh shit, that's way too edgelord for you. Even though it looked rad as fuck too. Another video starts to play, this time a heavily armored woman approaching what looks like a car sized salamander, but you shift your eyes up above the list of archetypes before the confrontation occurs.

>Please note that these upgrades in the game will be reflected on the User's physical self

You have no clue what the fuck is up with that. Gotta be a marketing gimmick or ploy to get military funding or something, direct brain download is still far out sci-fi shit even with all the advancements that've been made recently.

But what if it's not?

File: 1671920472287713.jpg (982 KB, 5686x5100)

982 KB JPG

Rolled 100 (1d100)

>>5509259

You remember the feeling of powerlessness as you sat by your mom in the hospital bed. All the technology and augmentations that a hefty, though not infinite, sum of money granted access to had still not been enough to do anything for her. Your eyes fall on the Organitech, and with no respect for your grief another video starts playing. This time it's a lithe woman in jumpsuit that leaves little to the imagination, though you have little time to wonder since you're more bewildered that the jumpsuit seems to be made of bone and oversized teeth. You are simultaneously disgusted and intrigued and as you watch she draws out a clump of fleshy grenades and throws them at a towering juggernaut of a creature, missing it horribly. Then the grenades grow legs and bite into the creature, proceeding to burrow through its body as the woman dodges its attacks with...less grace but greater tenacity than the ninja in the Edgerunner video had. Within a short timespan the colossus shivers and falls down, one of the grenade creatures burrows out of its skin and is noticeably larger now.

Damn, that's sick. Okay, you definitely don't want to fight against something like that so that's what you'll choose. Besides if the skill transfer thing is true maybe you'll be able to become a doctor if you ever work off your debt.

>[[ Primary Archetype Selected: Organitech. Are you sure? Y/N ]]
You confirm your selection, then remember that you still need to create your avatar. You have a few ideas.

>[Select from the following]
>Mimic the appearance of the woman who led you to the room. Svelte and mesmerizing with black hair and mirror reflective eyes.
>Create the image of a mad scientist. Pale and lean with sunken eyes, the sort of person you'd never expect to possess unnatural strength.
>Go for an unassuming but handsome light skinned man with an arresting and mischievous glint to their eyes.
>The image of a noble and distinguished gentlemen, old enough to exude the sort of confidence that only comes from surviving to that age.

You also input your name, Sibyllan.

>[[Avatar Finalized, Identifier acknowledged searching for a suitable husk-creator]]
>[[Suitable facility identified.]]
>[[Welcome to your own Broken Vessel, User Sibyllan. Will you seek to restore the dead gods, murder those still living, escape from the labyrinth that entombs them all, or attempt
to weave a f̷a̶t̶e̵ entirely of your own? Regardless, your answer is awaited.]]

You somehow feel like the ground is pulled out from under you despite the fact that you had neither ground nor body to begin with in the endless void. As you plummet your vision turns into static.

Rolled 54 (1d100)

>>5509261
Oh will the dice gods toy with me again even after such a long hiatus. Heh, no matter.

>>5509261
On one hand I actually like the edgy cyber-ninja aesthetic more than the slutty bio-punk look, but on the other hand the wish-fulfillment aspect of having been able to save our mom with biology superpowers or whatever was half of what I was going for in terms of IC motivation, plus bio-punk abilities are cool.

>Mimic the appearance of the woman who led you to the room. Svelte and mesmerizing with black hair and mirror reflective eyes.

Though I'd be cool with mixing this and the mad scientist look, she was wearing a lab coat after all. Mix her figure with the mad scientist's pale look and sunken eyes.

Rolled 45 (1d100)

>>5509270
You know what, I'm cool with that mix.

Thinking if we get a secondary class later the edgerunner be the best pick. Assuming nothing worth being a different class shows up to change that.

>>5509276
Agreed. I just didn't want to start off with a class that was purely a beatstick and of little utility or ability to offer a service other than hitting things in a social setting again in one of these VRMMO quests. Going forward though it'd probably be best to enhance our combat prowess with any class choices, and leaving any modifications of the cybernetic nature to our persons to be provided by some other vendor rather than speccing into it ourselves.

>>5509261
Yes pick Organitech.
Go for an unassuming but handsome light skinned man with an arresting and mischievous glint to their eyes.

Rolled 96 (1d100)

>>5509261

The static fades, and you find yourself slumped but somewhat standing inside a pod of some sort with a lid of hazy glass. As you look down to assess yourself you see that your avatar is clothed in a form fitting grey jumpsuit for now. It shows off your avatar rather well, and you are pleased with the somewhat haggard and chaotic aspect you infused into the physique of your tactiturn guide. Just enough to throw off anyone who might know her too, though they'd be left wondering if they saw you at a distance or in a crowd. You also see that some sort of gel is still draining out of the bottom of the tank though you and its interior are entirely dry. On an utterly alien impulse that you don't understand the origins of you reach down and cup your hand in the goo and consume it. Immediately after you do so you're paralyzed by a strange sensation. It's as if something glanced your way and your perception was shrunk down to a tiny dot as its gaze passed over you, and then you re-expanded to be larger and more detailed than ever before a heartbeat later. You feel changed. It's not exactly painful but it is startling and you let out a brief yelp as it happens.

You immediately regret this as your expanded perception lets you see some sort of blob on the other side of the glass lid react to your noise. You regard its approachhing silhouette with more calmness than you expected but still a fair bit of panic then look around your pod, identifying a red button that looks like an emergency release as well as some thick wires that you pull out of their sockets and wrap around your hands to use as a garotte or to shield your knuckles as best you can. Whatever noticed you jumps onto the pod and shortly afterwards strikes the glass, punching a hole through the canopy of your shelter and prison near your head with a small and short spike. You shield your eyes to keep glass splinters from falling into them, and hold your breath. The thing, whatever it is, leans down and makes a clicking sound near the hole. Then it repeats the sound several more times as you stay as still and quiet as possible, hoping it can't hear the beating of your heart.

File: ancient_predator_by_ket_d(...).jpg (59 KB, 1024x655)

59 KB JPG

Rolled 67 (1d100)

>>5509292
Probably only a minute or two later (though it felt much longer), the thing jumps down from the pod lid apparently satisfied that the pod lid is all there is to be seen. You carefully lean close to the hole it made and look out to catch a glance at your terrorizer. It's...not nearly as intimidating as what you'd thought up in your mind. A gaunt thing encased in either an exoskeleton or bone plates of some kind with a fleshy tail that has some flourishes on the end, but it's no larger than smallish dog.

Still, you're not sure if you want to take it on with your bare hands. Looking around though you see that you're in a small room that...bears some eerie semblances to the one that you climbed into in the real world not too long ago actually. This one is not nearly so pristine though. In addition to the grime, dust, and rust of long term disuse you spy a length of pipe that seems to fallen along with a portion of the ceiling. You contemplate your next moves.


>Just stay quiet. You feel something that you're sure must be your 'identifier' on your hip, pull it out and familiarize yourself with the UI while you wait for the thing to wander away.
>Hit the red button and rush for the pipe, then club that thing to death. No one gets to terrorize you and get away with it unless they're way bigger and scarier than that guy. [Roll 1d100 with vote]
>You feel somewhat stronger than you did in real life, and now that you look more closely the seal around the glass seems to have decayed. Try to punt the lid onto the creature and then stomp it to death. [Roll 1d100 with vote]
>Uhh...maybe you can talk to it?

>>5509294
>You feel somewhat stronger than you did in real life, and now that you look more closely the seal around the glass seems to have decayed. Try to punt the lid onto the creature and then stomp it to death.
You mean roll now?

Rolled 64 (1d100)

>>5509297
Yep, roll for it along with your vote. Crits (for good or bad) auto-select by the way.

Though I may shift to separating the rolls from the prompts later.

Rolled 21 (1d100)

>>5509299
Just asking. Don't want to influence votes based on rolls.

>>5509285
Yeah like you said it is a social game. It's not like we can't make some friends and have them specialize in that.

Rolled 85 (1d100)

>>5509294
>Uhh...maybe you can talk to it?
On the off chances influences our skills. Speak with organic creatures of any kind could be pretty useful.

Rolled 43 (1d100)

>>5509294
>Punt the lid onto the creature, go for the pipe, but delay the killing blow and try to talking to it...softly.

In the future I would separate the rolls from the votes to keep the votes from shifting in the case of a good roll. The incentive otherwise is too strong for many to ignore I find. I'll try and be more active next time you start a "session", I didn't think you'd be this active, QM.

>>5509294
>Uhh...maybe you can talk to it?
The way the class intro is structured makes it seems we have the ability to control lower forms of organic life. Most likely we can implant some sort of brain virus or parasite that lets us command them, or use pheromones to control their behaviour. Best take the time now when we're in a relatively low-stress situation to figure out whether we can control creatures or not.

Rolled 7 (1d100)

>>5509362
Well my hope is/was to kinda get into the meat of things ASAP to acquire and retain players. I'm also using this as an exercise to develop and brush the rust off of my writing and storytelling skills after a long hiatus so I've got a fair amount of energy to dedicate to it for the time being.

>>5509294
Waiting on a tie breaker.

>>5509294
>Uhh...maybe you can talk to it?

Rolled 53 (1d100)

>>5509294
>Uhh...maybe you can talk to it?
>[LOCKED]
Writan'.

Rolled 87 (1d100)

>>5509294
>>5509726

Uhh...maybe you can talk to it? The class video showed the girl seeming to control some lesser creatures when she threw those grenades that bored into the big monster, so it seems like you should have some way of doing it too. You lightly clear your throat, seeing the thing look back over its shoulder at the sound. More articulation in its neck than you would've expected given all those armored plates, must not be bone.

"H-hey there monster, let's be fri-" before you can finish your sentence it leaps across the space between you and lands on the glass of the pod. It spears the spikes on all four of its legs into the glass of the pod using the momentum of its leap causing a spiderweb of cracks to form between them and the previous hole.

"Fuck, why did I think that'd work!" You manage to curse your planning in what is definitely not a terrified scream, the noise contrasting eerily against the creature's lack of a growl or roar. In the next second it's through the glass and upon you. You're in a horrible position to defend yourself getting mauled by an animal, jammed inside a cramped pod with the only means of escape being through the glass your attacker has just shattered with brute strength. It falls down on you, mouth stretching farther than should be possible to reveal jaws full of glassy needle teeth.

>[Roll 1d100, Bo2]

Rolled 12 (1d100)

>>5509742
It's just overly friendly, I'm sure we'll be fine.

Rolled 58 (1d100)

>>5509742
I'll roll the second die too since we're 90 minutes in without another roller.

Rolled 84 (1d100)

>>5509742
Bit late, but here's another roll from a different anon if you prefer it.

>>5509167
>inspired by Broken Sky
> not being inspired by Quest for Arcadia

Rolled 45 (1d100)

>>5509742

With a smack of impact you feel in your whole body your wire-wrapped fist rises to meet the creature as it falls upon you, hitting it squarely in the lower jaw and forcing its mouth closed hard enough for several of its teeth to shatter. You seem to move much faster here than you could in real life.

But then it's on you, spiked limbs pierce your jumpsuit effortlessly and it opens its broken mouth and chomps down on the meat of your upper arm. You feel a sickening crack as it does so and scream instinctively.

>[[Sibyllan HP 11/15]]

You grip the creature's head with your broken arm to keep it from disengaging and getting your neck. You don't even feel the pain of the broken bone, and fumble around with your other hand looking for anything to use as a weapon. You seize a shard of glass at the same time that you feel a fleshy fold in the armor on the back of the thing's head, and a moment later you unite the two with the force of desperation. There's a satisfying thunk, and the creature goes stiff.

>[[Sibyllan has defeated Wreck Scavenger]]

[Continued in a few hours, gotta get some lunch and visit with the senpai for a while.

Rolled 62 (1d100)

>>5509742
Not the best start. I wonder if it's level of hunger is to high or mentally unstable.

Maybe we can pull out some wolverine caws and boney armor plates. Assuming that we can use powers on that level.

>>5509877
>>5509878
Maybe we can fiddle with our UI and see if we can do anything augment/crafting wise with the body. Maybe we can get some ingredients to heal with or something, or maybe we can revive the creature under our control.

>>5509936
Hopefully flesh manipulation is something we can do as a low level scrub, so if we can't revive the Scavenger we should see about healing ourselves or making rudimentary armor out of it's corpse.

Rolled 33 (1d100)

>>5509877
You gingerly unlatch the Scavenger's jaws from your arm, shove its limp body out of the pod, and then fairly collapse out of it and onto the floor yourself.

With the fight over the adrenaline slowly leaves you and you shiver as the pain from your mangled and broken arm is no longer suppressed. Well, that's how it would go in the real world. As it stands, there's just a dull throbbing numbness in the area. Instead you just have the jitters because of the intensity of the experience. You'd never had time for VR games nor the chrome for full dive ones, but you'd never expected them to feel so real. There are some very deep seated instinctive responses to having a monster trying to gnaw your face off no matter how real or unreal you think it is.

You take a minute to calm your breathing and glance around the room as you do so. Blank steel panels for walls, ceiling, and floor. They might've been painted white once but are now streaked with brown-red rust stains and splotches of luminescent fungi. A section of the ceiling has collapsed, revealing a crawlspace overhead with a wild assortment of wires and pipes and the other miscellany that run buildings. The door is actually behind you, mostly blocked by the pod you were in. It was clearly deliberately maneuvered there to restrict access judging by the scrapes leading to its current position from the center of the room. It isn't anything like a perfect seal though, and you suspect the scavenger made its way in through one of the gaps.

Which all begs the question of where the person that moved it into the doorway went. You think about it as you pick the length of pipe up off the floor, and check the body of the Scav for loot.

>[[Sibyllan acquired: Rusty Pipe]]
>[[Acquired Gene-Trace: Chitinous Exoskeleton]]

You start to wonder what to do next, when you hear scraping sounds from outside the door. You have a sinking feeling in your stomach as you climb back into the pod for a bit and stick your head out of one of the gaps to look around.

You're greeted by the sight of about half a dozen Scavengers all snuffling their way towards you through a steel hallway drowned in a thick layer of filth. Good news is that the other direction seems clear. The filth gradually lessens in that direction as well, though you can't see if it leads to anything from your current vantage point.

You extricate your head carefully but a shard of glass dislodges from pod lid and shatters on its floor, and you hear the clacking of the Scavengers claws change tempo and begin to approach you with clear purpose.

Time to make a decision, and better make it fast.

Rolled 16 (1d100)

>>5509992

>Access your UI to see if you can grab anything to help as you prepare to defend the room. The door is blocked such that they'll bottleneck and you have a weapon now.
>Crawl up into the hole in the ceiling and try to hide from the scavs.
>Crawl up into the ceiling and try to make your way elsewhere, hopefully staying quiet enough to not draw attention to yourself.
>Wrench the pod aside and make a dash down the hallway.
>Wrench the pod aside and make a stand in the hallway.
>Write-In

>>5509994
We can't fight all of them, just one bite took off four of our HP.

>Crawl up into the hole in the ceiling and try to hide from the scavs.

Crawling around in a metal crawlspace will make too much noise, we'd be in close quarters with a weapon that is best used for swinging against a foe that can bite us from the front even if we had the luxury of facing them one at a time. I also doubt we can outrun them or outfight them and it is better to look at our UI when we have space and time to breath. So that leaves hiding.

>>5509994
>Access your UI to see if you can grab anything to help as you prepare to defend the room. The door is blocked such that they'll bottleneck and you have a weapon now.

Rolled 54 (1d100)

>>5510013
I agree and hope we can look at the ui while hidden. Also if there is mud or something to cover our body and mask our scent. That would be a bonus I would think.

Rolled 65 (1d100)

Alright guys and gals, we're instituting a new voting system!

>First option to 3 is the preferred means of locking in an option, unless there's a shift in consensus between the point that First-To-3 is selected and I finish writing the post
>Barring 3 votes for a single option, we'll take whatever's most popular within ~1hr of the post requesting your choice. Unless consensus shifts before I'm finished writing and feel like rewriting the post.
>Also, henceforth roll 1d100 when you vote. In the event of a tie between options, the option with the highest roll will be selected. These rolls are only used in this case, they will not be used for combat resolution.

Now, I can't decide whether I'm going to go back to sleep or write up the next post. If I do then we'll be going with:
>Crawl up into the hole in the ceiling and try to hide from the scavs, dousing ourselves in mud to conceal our scent, and trying to access our UI once we're secreted up there.

Rolled 39 (1d100)

>>5509994

You elect to crawl up into the ceiling, discretion will be the better part of valor today. Before jumping up you quickly grab a handful of the muck from the corridor. It's wet and absolutely disgusting, like grabbing a handful of rotten algae and seaweed, but it'll certainly cover up your smell.

As you grip the edge of the hole you realize that grabbing that shard of glass tore a large gash in your hand, you're pretty sure you see a hint of bone. You hope there aren't mechanics for disease and infection in the game. Good thing you grabbed the algal muck with your other hand...

Despite the injury you grip the edge easily and hoist yourself up into the dark mess of cables above the ceiling. You're not sure if the gravity is actually less here or if you're way stronger, but either way it's nice...well they've gotta make up for this intro somehow, you suppose.

It's not too difficult to push the bundles of cabling aside and make a space for yourself, and in fact it seems like this above-the-ceiling space might expand over several rooms and the hallway you were just in. You could definitely attempt to escape from up here, but you'd be operating blind essentially tunneling through a huge mess of wires. Your feet disappear into darkness right as you hear the first of the scavengers scratching its way past the pod, making those clicking sounds that you assume are some sort of echolocation.

Rolled 32 (1d100)

>>5510644

You arrange yourself amidst the cables so you can get a view back down into the room, observing as the first Scav squeezes its way in past the pod. It quickly locates the body of your attacker and starts ripping strips of flesh off, streaking brilliant indigo blood across the floor. Either the smell of the blood or the noise sends the creatures outside into a frenzy. You watch as the next scav that tries to enter is dragged backwards out of the hole several times by its fellows. After several attempts that mar its chitin with progressively more bite marks it succeeds, then turns around and harasses all those that try to follow after it.

You doubt its defense will last long but it's clear you'll be stuck up here for a while. Deciding to do something that will hopefully improve your odds of getting out of here alive you pull what you assume is your identifier off of your hip and fiddle with it a bit until it opens up a User Interface.

>[[ Sibyllan ]]
>[[ Primary Archetype: Organitech ]]
>[[ HP: 11 / 15 ]]
>[[ CC: 25/110 ]]
>[[ Level 1: 1 EXP Available ]]

>[[Inventory]]
-Rusty Pipe, wielded
-Podsuit, worn
>[[Gene-Traces]]
-Chitinous Exoskeleton, (1)
>[[Stored in Identifier: Sibyllan]]
- [0] Credits

Yep, as expected so far. You've got nothin', except whatever a Gene-Trace is. Looks like this is how you'd access messages and other system functions too, not that it matters right now. Oh well. Maybe there's something you can spend EXP on that'll help. You focus on the icon and are granted a list of skills to peruse.

Rolled 99 (1d100)

>>5510652

>When Spending EXP you may perform any of the following actions
-Increase HP
-Upgrade a Weapon Skill
-Upgrade one of your Masteries.

> [[ Increasing the levels of your Masteries will allow you to learn the new abilities or upgrade previously learned ones associated with that heading. ]]
> [[ At some Mastery levels, you may be offered a chance to specialize based on ability selections to that point. ]]
> [[ You can't invest in a Secondary Archetype until a higher level. ]]
> [[ Increasing the level of a Weapon Skill will improve your damage and effectiveness with that weapon. ]]
> [[ Increasing the level of other skills will improve their effects, often adding entirely new functionality. ]]
> [[ Most skills are hidden until you've unlocked one of the prerequisites for them. ]]

>>[[ Sibyllan ]]

>>[[ General ]]
[ Curse: ????? ]
[ Mutative Assimilator ] - Able to acquire Gene-Traces for Augmentoids through physical contact, no harvesting required.

>> [[ Masteries ]]
>[[ Medicine (0) ]]
None
>[[ Fleshcrafting (0) ]]
None
>[[ Alchemy (0) ]]
None
>[[ Neuromancy (0) ]]
None

>>[[ Weapon Skills ]]
Bludgeons 0
Unarmed 0

Rolled 97 (1d100)

>>5510656

>Medicine - Each point invested increases HP by a small amount and improves all administered healing.
[Medicinal Compounding, Passive] - Grants the knowledge required to craft medicines and combat drugs, and the tools to extract their components.
[Contagion Reservoir, Passive] - You have adapted your vascular system to handle pathogens that would quickly incapacitate lesser beings.
[Vital Reservoir, Passive] - You have adapted your lymphatic system to be universally compatible and beneficial to those less fortunate than yourself. Also grants [ Lymph Transfer, Active 20CC ]

>Fleshcrafting - Each point invested increases HP by a small amount and improves all personal stats, but also increases CC cost of cybernetic augmentations.
[Corpus Manipulation, Passive] - The science of personal permanent enhancement and manipulating the physical form. Small bonus to all physical stats. Select one of the following to manifest immediately: [Retractable Bone Blades (Fingers)], [Amplified Nervous System], [Superdense Marrow], [Iron Body], [Regeneration]
[Forced Evolution, Passive] - Allows chance of huge improvements to the body, even moreso for a more experienced fleshcrafter. Be warned that you can only undergo so many dramatic changes before it backfires on you.
[Symbiosis, Passive] - Grants knowledge of augmentoid creation, the tools to harvest Gene-Traces to construct them, and allows greater interface and tolerance to them.

>Alchemy - Each point invested increases potency of all compounds you create and statuses you inflict.
[Alchemical Compounding, Passive] - Grants the knowledge required to craft medicines and poisons, and the tools to extract their components.
[Acidic Strike, Active 20CC] - Imbue your next attack with a potent corrosive effect, or produce a gout of acid from anywhere on your body. You're granted a degree of resistance to acid for a short time after activation.
[Paradoxical Reaction, Active 20CC] - You've discovered a compound capable of transmuting any effect to its alchemical opposite...mostly, anyway. Surely a step on the path to the Philosopher's Stone.

>Neuromancy - Each point invested expands Cerebral Capacity by a small amount, and increases resistance to mental assaults, but also increases CC cost of cybernetic augmentations.
[Keen Observation, Passive] - You gain insight into your mind's blindspots, as well as those of others.
[Unnatural Talent, Passive] - Who says you're only born talented? You gain points in weapons skills when you wield one for a significant amount of time.
[Neuroplastic Optimization, Passive] - Grants the knowledge required to modify or extend the mind and associated nervous systems, and the tools to do so. Increases Cerebral Capacity by 30 units.

>>5510660

In case it wasn't clear, if you want to spend your EXP on a given skill then vote for the Mastery associated with it (Medicine, Fleshcrafting, etc.), then we'll run another vote to determine which skill under that heading gets selected next.

You peruse the list of your current skills, as well as those available to you. The possibilities race through your mind...and in your first bout of fortune it seems that you'll have ample time to ponder them. The Scav defending the entrance to your little room evidently holds quite a grudge against the ones that tried to keep it from getting in, and has actually killed the next one that tried to get in. Plugging the gap between pod and doorway with its corpse in the process. It's ripping away at the carcass just as the first entrant to the room is still doing to the one you killed.

The ones stuck outside are clearly displeased at this arrangement and are clambering over the other side of the pod trying to find another way to squeeze in, making frustrated hisses as they do so. From the looks of it they'd need to physically shift the device to do so though, and you doubt they'll be able to do it quickly if at all.

However you spend your EXP, you should probably decide on something to do.

>Just wait here, if they're cannibals then the problem will resolve or at least reduce itself given time.
>You know, who or what dragged the pod from the center of the room anyway? The creatures' feast is providing some noise, and you think you see a divot in the cables across the gap from where someone might've traveled previously.
>With the way effectively barred to the ones outside, your trusty (presumably) length of pipe, and the element of surprise against the two below you...you can probably take them.
>Write-In

>>5510660
>Fleshcrafting - Each point invested increases HP by a small amount and improves all personal stats, but also increases CC cost of cybernetic augmentations.

I think we ought to either invest in bludgeons or Corpus Manipulation immediately. My reasoning is we need to be reliably skilled with a weapon or martial skill given our immediate environment and needs. Bludgeon because we have a pipe, or Corpus Manipulation to get the bone blades, in which case we'd then pick up a point in unarmed or whatever skill the bone blades count for.

The other stuff is cool but we can spec into it later once we have the luxury of actually being able to fight and survive in our immediate area.

>>5510661
>You know, who or what dragged the pod from the center of the room anyway? The creatures' feast is providing some noise, and you think you see a divot in the cables across the gap from where someone might've traveled previously.

Don't want to get into a fight with multiple opponents until we upgrade a mastery that lets us heal or until it is confirmed we invest in a Weapon Skill or mastery that gets us a good weapon.

Rolled 8 (1d100)

>>5510660
Yo I look at the medicine and think how we could master biological warfare. Maybe later make ourselves immune and start passing around diseases. Hopefully to take out things before combat or at least slow them down in prolonged combat.

>Fleshcrafting
Main bread and butter skill. I'm assuming the upgrades be stat wise Damage, reaction, blood loss / immunity, damage reduction, passive or fast healing.

[Iron Body] or [Regeneration] is my thought for long term fighting. If iron stops most of their damage we can kill the two for exp and kick going. The reg will be good for hit and run.

>>5510661
>With the way effectively barred to the ones outside, your trusty (presumably) length of pipe, and the element of surprise against the two below you...you can probably take them.

>>5510660
>Fleshcrafting

>>5510759
>I think we ought to either invest in bludgeons or Corpus Manipulation immediately. My reasoning is we need to be reliably skilled with a weapon or martial skill given our immediate environment and needs. Bludgeon because we have a pipe, or Corpus Manipulation to get the bone blades, in which case we'd then pick up a point in unarmed or whatever skill the bone blades count for.
If anything I'd say we start with Regen here, we're down some hitpoints and we've got broken bones and a decent wound on our hand, plus we currently don't know how or when we'll be able to heal. Having some regen that takes care of that is pretty good as a starting skill until we figure out the game systems.
Alternatively, if we just lay still up here the doggos will probably kill each other and then we can ambush whichever one is left. With them all dead, a point in Symbiosis would probably let us forge a flesh minion or two out of their remains.
---------------------------

[Symbiosis] is the minion skill tree, higher levels probably means we can craft bigger flesh monsters or control many more smaller ones. Since we have zero points invested in it that's probably why we couldn't attempt to control the Scavanger Doggo, though on it's own it seems unlikely to let us take control of existing creatures. Maybe combined with [Neuromancy - Keen Obersvation] we can figure out how to infect the minds of creatures/players to manipulate them.

Looks like [Fleshcrafting] is the main skill tree (duh) with two different build paths: Minions(Symbiosis) or Self-Improvement(Corpus Manipulation), with [Forced Evolution] being the middle tree that seems to have better pay-offs if we focus on [Corpus Manipulation], as it reads anyway. Whatever path we take, holding off on taking [Forced Evolution] until later levels is probably for the best since it seems to have a cap on how many times it can change us (and if we're more experienced we appear to get greater benefits from it), though it could also be possible that it would let us alter minion stats aswell.
[Neuromancy] I would pin as our secondary skill tree unless we want to multiclass. [Unnatural Talent] and [Keen Observation] are probably must takes, with the former removing the need to spend EXP points to level up Weapon Skills and letting us just train that shit in and the latter would hopefully let us infect minds and do subtle manipulations or outright dominate other creatures.
[Medicine] and [Alchemy] are support and DPS trees respectively and should be tertiary at best, personally I'm leaning towards [Medicine] which probably makes us immune to all forms of toxins and poison downt the line, and it increases our regenerative capabilities. Probably lets us heal our minions too.

>>5510661
>Just wait here, if they're cannibals then the problem will resolve or at least reduce itself given time.
Hang out in the duct until there's one scavanger left standing, then ambush the remaining one.

Rolled 37, 95 = 132 (2d100)

>>5510816
>>5510811
>>5510759
Oh man, 3 whole anons are playing my game. That just tickles me pink, thanks for playing guys.

Rolling for DTtDuagC and LpXwBtxl respectively to determine which action gets taken. Highest roll goes through, so if they're both sub-8 then it'll be the surprise attack.

=====

>[[ Selection Confirmed, Fleshcrafting ]]
>[[ Select one of the following skills to acquire. ]]

[Corpus Manipulation, Passive] - The science of personal permanent enhancement and manipulating the physical form. Small bonus to all physical stats. Select one of the following to manifest immediately: [Retractable Bone Blades (Fingers)], [Amplified Nervous System], [Superdense Marrow], [Iron Body], [Regeneration]

[Forced Evolution, Passive] - Allows chance of huge improvements to the body, even moreso for a more experienced fleshcrafter. Be warned that you can only undergo so many dramatic changes before it backfires on you.

[Symbiosis, Passive] - Grants knowledge of augmentoid creation, the tools to harvest Gene-Traces to construct them, and allows greater interface and tolerance to them.

Rolled 68 (1d100)

>>5510832

>Just wait here, if they're cannibals then the problem will resolve or at least reduce itself given time.
Writan'.

>>5510816
>[Neuromancy] I would pin as our secondary skill tree ...
I was thinking similar solely for the 'increases resistance to mental assaults'.

Thinking dip into Medicine for out job and in town money maker.

----

If [Regeneration] is what gets agreed on. Then yeah waiting it out would be for the best. Not sure if we'll need to role off or not since we each had picked something different. That being said after I forgot about the hand wound. I would be down to change to things moving.

>>5510832
>[Corpus Manipulation, Passive]
[Regeneration] Best to heal while we wait.

>>5510816
I did think of going regen or scavenging what's left, but I still think it is better to get a good weapon or upgrade a weapon skill first to prevent further damage in the first place and be able to actually access further EXP and crafting materials at all. I think regen should come after. I know that one creature wasn't hard to kill, but there seem to be a lot of them and they did a decent chunk of damage to us, plus I'd want to be competent in a fight should we run into another player. Though I do understand preferring regen because they weren't that hard to kill and it'd be nice to recover our health.

Otherwise I more or less concur with the analysis of the skill tree.

>>5510832
>[Corpus Manipulation, Passive] [Retractable Bone Blades (Fingers)]

Though, I won't be butt-mad if regen wins. I'm also cool with going symbiosis and trying to scavenge/revive a minion once we drop back down.

Rolled 78 (1d100)

>>5510851
Rollin' since I forgot to earlier.

Rolled 15 (1d100)

>>5510843
I plan to back the weapons next level up, but if they win. I would find it funny if they left holes in our hands till we got regen.

>>5510832
>[Corpus Manipulation] > [Regeneration]
Since waiting won the roll I think playing it it safe here I is the gameplan, the dogs will tear each other to shreds and we'll finish of whoever is left. We have something called "Gene Trace -Chitinous Exoskeleton", I assume we would be able to form some sort of flesh armor out of the dead Scavangers then so we become a little tankier, even if we can't raise a minion from them.

>>5510844
>I did think of going regen or scavenging what's left, but I still think it is better to get a good weapon or upgrade a weapon skill first to prevent further damage
Fair enough, though I personally don't see much use of the bone blades right now since we already have a 'weapon' that should serve us through this tutorial section, though in the future we could probably do something similar to Wolverine Claws but made out of bone.

>>5510837
>Thinking dip into Medicine for out job and in town money maker.
>potion brewer day job
>we pick up all three skills in the Medicine tree
>use our own blood to make high-level Toxin-Resist healing potions
>when we begin to feel light headed we just manipulate a steak into more blood and continue brewing
I dig it.

Rolled 18 (1d100)

>>5510661

Considering the chunk of HP that a single Scav bite took out of you, you opt to pick up Regeneration.

>[[ Sibyllan ]]
>[[ HP 11/17 ]]

>>[[ General ]]
[ Curse: ????? ]
[ Mutative Assimilator ] - Able to acquire Gene-Traces for Augmentoids through physical contact, no harvesting required.

>> [[ Masteries ]]
>[[ Medicine (0) ]]
None
>[[ Fleshcrafting (1) ]]
[Corpus Manipulation, Lvl 1]
[Regeneration]
>[[ Alchemy (0) ]]
None
>[[ Neuromancy (0) ]]
None

>>[[ Weapon Skills ]]
Bludgeons 0
Unarmed 0

You wonder what that [Curse: ????? ] tag is about, but dismiss it as a mystery to be resolved later. As you close the UI you feel an unnerving slithering feeling against your spine, as if one of the black cables surrounding you has come alive, making you tense up.

>[HP 12/17]

Oh, it's just the healing coming into effect. Oh thank the gods.

You tamp down your sudden tension and anxiety, and turn to look down at the Scavs again. The body that was blocking access into the room has been torn apart by the efforts of the defender and those outside, and the creature is currently attempting to score another kill and easy meal as two more of the monsters worm their way in through separate gaps around the pod. It's clearly worse the wear for it though, with one of its forelimbs dangling by a flap of muscle and several bloody trenches cut into the chitin covering its face from bites.

As you watch it jams the spike of its remaining forelimb into an eye of one of the intruders, and you swear you can see the moment when the thing dies. That gives the other scav time to scramble inside though, and without hesitation it falls onto the weakened defender.

>[HP 13/17]

A messy fight ensues, and surprisingly the defender comes out on top. What a scrappy little monster...it loses several eyes and a couple of armor plates in the process though. Scrappy, as you've decided to call him, drags the corpse of the critter it stabbed in the eye out of the gap to eat its fill. The final scav you noticed worms its way in and begins to feast on the other corpse.

>[HP 14/17]

Then you notice that the first Scav to enter the room has finished its meal and...uhh, it is looking significantly more bulky now. It leaps towards the newcomer and another scuffle ensues. Scrappy notices too and after making a few echo clicks towards the fight, decides to squirm out of the room with its life.

Oh, a monster after your own heart. How precious.

The fight takes longer than you would've expected, given the clear edge that BulkyScav has over the newcomer. Maybe Bulky isn't a good fighter, isn't used to its new abilities, or maybe starving and being backed into a corner lends Newcomer ferocity.

>[HP 15/17]

"Well, that was pretty gruesome."

You mumble to yourself, looking at the aftermath of the fight. Indigo blood now coats pretty everything inside the room now. Bulky stands as the victor, with the corpses of its enemies as spoils. It didn't escape uninjured though.

Rolled 6 (1d100)

>>5510911

>[HP 16/17]

Several of the creature's armor plates are torn or gouged significantly enough as to be rendered flimsy, and blood pours from bite marks that very nearly caught its throat. Poor Bulky is looking like he's on his last legs, to be honest. It even lays down on the floor from apparent exhaustion as it drags one of the corpses over towards it to begin consuming the fallen.

>[HP 17/17]

It occurs to you that you don't know whether letting the Scav consume the corpses will continue to provide it with enhancements, and that even if you waited for it to finish and leave that would just mean that it's wandering around outside where you might run into it in a less favorable situation. You're back beyond your previous peak, too.

On the other hand, now would also be the perfect time to crawl through the cables, with all apparent threats occupied and unable to respond even if you do make noise.

>Gotta level up somehow. Drop down and attack the Scav.
>Follow the telltale signs of a tunnel in the cables to where ever it may lead.
>No really, just wait. Bulky's as likely to distract other threats outside as he is to attack you.
>Write-In

Rolled 30 (1d100)

>>5510920
>Gotta level up somehow. Drop down and attack the Scav.

Perfect timing, and it is best we not allow it back into the ecosystem as that may come back to bite us in the ass. I think we can take it even without a weapon skill. After we hopefully win, maybe we should pick up Symbiosis or some other harvesting skill to take what we can from this strengthened creature.

>>5510920
>Gotta level up somehow. Drop down and attack the Scav.
Yup, that's what I was hoping for. A damaged creature rip for being turned into EXP. Granted, it's a little bit bigger but it's way damaged so we should be able to take it.

Rolled 21 (1d100)

>>5510920

>Gotta level up somehow. Drop down and attack the Scav.
>Roll 1d100, Bo3
Go ahead and reroll if we haven't gotten to 3 from separate anons within 15 minutes or so

Rolled 59 (1d100)

>>5510952

Rolled 66 (1d100)

>>5510952

Rolled 53 (1d100)

>>5510952

Rolled 86 (1d100)

>>5510952
Kill this man.

Rolled 58 (1d100)

>>5510952

>Rolled 66, Success, Dubs

You gradually ease yourself out of the cocoon of cables you'd created and get situated to drop down out of the ceiling onto the Scav. It's right below you, awkwardly trying to pry away the chitin on one of the corpses to get at the meat beneath. You take a few breaths to steady yourself. Thankfully you didn't make any noise to alert it yet, grip your pipe firmly.

'Here goes nothing'

You think, and then hop down from the lip of the hole and fall towards the creature.

That's how it would've gone, if the ceiling panel you were sitting on didn't give way at the last second and fall along with you with a horrendous screech.

You almost feel like a helpless observer in your own body as the coup de grace with all your weight and momentum behind goes awry from the beginning. The next few seconds are a jumble of sensations. You feel a sharp pain in your ribs just as you land on the ground in a heap with the panel. Sparing a glance you realize that the Scavenger's tail moved faster than you could see and struck you in the torso as you fell, sinking several inches into your flesh with an edge that's much sharper than it was on your first attacker...and then it was promptly severed as the ceiling panel fell edgewise on it.

>[HP 14/17]
>Acquired Gene-Trace: [Semi-Autonomous Nervous System]

It's not too serious though, and you don't have time to worry about it anyway. Despite the reaction, and your fumbled landing, you've definitely caught the bulky scavenger by surprise. It hisses in pain from its severed tail and starts rising to face you.

But you're faster. You catch its hind limb in one hand and jerk the leg towards you and out from under it as it rises, bringing its head within striking distance of your improvised mace. Only the first strike is somewhat difficult to make, from your tangled position, but it lands true on the Scav's head. After that it's stunned and increasingly unable to resist (let alone turn the situation around) as you bash the monster's head repeatedly until it's nothing more than a pulp of chitin, brain matter, and indigo blood.

>[[Sibylllan has defeated Prime Wreck Scavenger]]

Rolled 42 (1d100)

>>5511000

>[HP 15/17]

"Aah, the sweet taste of success."

You say to no one in particular, wiping bits of brain and ichor from your face. You look around to make sure there are no other immediate threats to your life and as you do your gaze falls upon something precious that tumbled down along with you from the ceiling. It's a...well you're not sure what it is, physically. Like a chunk of pure light manifested physically, your mother's love lays amidst a wreath of cables framing it like tentacles. You must have it, and instinctively reach out to grab it.

>[[Sibyllan acquired: Shard of Tiamet]]

Your urgent need is instantly soothed as you absorb the Shard. The fleeting feeling of your mom laughing as she played with you when she was still healthy fades along with it, and you're left staring at the tangled mess of cables radiating outwards in twisting patterns from where the Shard had just been.

You also grab the severed tail the Scavenger dropped, it's too awkwardly shaped to make a good weapon but someone who's currently wielding a broken piece of pipe can't be choosy.

>[[Sibyllan acquired: Prime Scav Tail]]

You spend some time experimenting with the corpses, trying to activate [Mutative Assimilator] or see if you can manipulate the meat to your own ends but can't seem to make anything happen. Shrugging, you go and move the Pod out of the doorway instead. By the time you're done your health is back up to full. You step out into the hallway. It's still a blank-walled corridor but now that you can look around more leisurely you notice that there's a downward slant to it in the direction where the sludge has built up, and the general state of things in that direction gets progressively worse. There's also a moist but fresh breeze coming from that way.

In the direction where the slime decreases, on the other hand, are what you presume to be Scrappy Scav's tracks. They're not the only ones though. Impressions in the mud indicate that quite a few scavs and possibly other things as well have headed in that direction in the recent past.

"Man, whenever I get out I'm definitely telling them they need to make the new player experience more friendly..."

You sigh, and contemplate what to do next.

>Head in the direction of the filth. That's where the group of scavs came from and where things are leaving from which means they're not there right now.
>Head down the less filthy path. If things are going that direction then it probably means that it leads towards something.
>Now that you're not pressed for your life, go back up into the ceiling and see if there are perhaps other avenues of navigation. Besides, that's where you found your precious Shard...
>You notice a few other doorways in this section of hallway. You know, if they have pods too then you could set up a fairly robust barricade and then ambush creatures as they pass through...
>Write-In

>>5511000
Nice, double doubles and trips.

>>5511039
Technically the name was Sibylla, not Sibyllan, but whatever

>Now that you're not pressed for your life, go back up into the ceiling and see if there are perhaps other avenues of navigation. Besides, that's where you found your precious Shard...

We should also probably follow the path where we suspect someone that moved our pod crawled off to, could lead us to someone.

It has begun. We need more Gems!

Rolled 61 (1d100)

>>5511051
I changed it to Sibyllan because gender hadn't been decided on at the time and that can almost work as a boy or girl's name.

Rolled 98 (1d100)

>>5511051
Yeah. I'll back it.

If we can check our exp as well. I don't mind grabbing the claws and [Symbiosis, Passive] in hopes of making use of the bodies.

Neuromancy [Keen Observation, Passive] or Medicine [Contagion Reservoir, Passive] would be my next thoughts. If this is an experimental lab it would be good to ether have better awareness or some protection.

>>5511130
Yeah, agreed on the EXP choices.

Rolled 34 (1d100)

>>5511039

>Roll 1d100, to see what sort of trouble you get up to

Rolled 1 (1d100)

>>5511164
Trips again...

>>5511171
Oh god...why!?

>>5511172
Because the fastest way to level up is to go hard.

Rolled 61 (1d100)

>>5511171

Heh, well you can still roll to try and get a 100 if you like.

Or maybe things'll double down with 2 Nat 1s instead. Should be fun either way.

>>5511179
Nameless speedrun when?!

>>5511183
More fun this way with a 1, lets see what happens.

Rolled 44 (1d100)

Alright, I didn't anticipate you guys finding what you're gonna find just yet so I'm gonna need some time to finalize some stuff that I had only sketched out so far. Next update should either be late this evening or some time tomorrow morning.

Rolled 16 (1d100)

>>5511039
>>5511164

You decide to revisit your hiding place and investigate the trail of disturbed cables you noticed while you were there, presumably left by the last occupant of the room you spawned in. After all you found the Shard up in the ceiling, now realizing that it caressing your back was likely what caused the electric tingle rather than your regeneration kicking in.

You hop back up into the tangle with gusto, and begin following the telltale signs of the passage of someone else. It's difficult, whoever traversed this area last did so long ago. It's pitch black and various wires, piping, and ductwork occupy almost the entire space above the ceiling grid. You're forced to navigate by touch, gently prodding the cabling inch by inch to determine where the ancient inertia of the cables was disturbed by some other sentient hand before you. It takes immense concentration and a delicate hand but you manage, almost as if guided.

Eventually you follow the trail until you reach an open pipe about the size of a sewer cover and heading downwards. You realize, belatedly, that you've lost track of where you are relative to where you started from. You start to panic a bit when it fully hits you that you have no idea whether you've traveled a few dozen feet or a mile from where you started. You are surrounded by pitch blackness and pressed in on all sides by the tendrils of plastic-sheathed copper...backtracking is simply not an option.

Which actually makes your next choice rather simple: follow the path you started on, or die trying to find your way back. You opt for the former and perform some complicated maneuvers so that you'll at least slide down the pipe feet first rather than greeting whatever's to come with your face.

One last thought runs through your inner monologue before you slide down.

"What's the worst that could possibly happen?"

File: cybersam.jpg (237 KB, 1500x1726)

237 KB JPG

Rolled 81 (1d100)

>>5511352

After an extended period of sliding downwards you realize that you don't actually have any means of measuring time here. As such you can only generalize that it took approximately an eternity to get to the point where the pipe evened out to a horizontal rather than vertical orientation. Having to traverse the fairly narrow pipe horizontally in perfect darkness feet first is almost enough to make you wish you'd dived in head first, but the thought quickly vanishes when you consider how far you would've had to fall before getting to this section.

Eventually you emerge from the pipework into a forgotten corner of a massacre. You feel rather than hear or see the notification of your location.

> [[ Starship Wreckage Field: Infinite Slaughter Control Chamber ]]

A shudder passes through your body as your foot lands in a puddle of congealed blood outside the pipe. The consummate darkness lifts, but you wish it hadn't as it only serves to reveal a field of corpses around you. Some human-looking, most not. Husks of monsters beyond your worst imaginings litter the area around you, all built up into a mound upon which a single figure sits.

Rolled 36 (1d100)

>>5511405

You instinctively freeze as soon as you see the figure upon the hill of death, but you hadn't anticipated a sight that would freeze your blood and lose your balance. Your hand falls upon half of a bisected human corpse.

> [[Loot all, Identifier 'Arturion']]

You don't have time to look at what you've accidentally stolen before a voice sounds out from over your shoulder, and you realize the figure is no longer on the hill of bodies in front of you.

"What's this? A servant of Tiamet stumbling into my domain? I thought your ilk had learned the consequences of such transgressions by now. "

Oh shit, oh fuck.You look up and see it. Him? To be honest you're not sure whether the thing is human or machine. Every nerve and instinct in your body screams that the difference is irrelevant. Whatever the figure's history it's 100% monster now.

"No...not a servant. Merely touched by the goddess' hand.

Oh my, and what bravery to confront me in my lair while so weak!"

You freeze and look up at the figure behind the voice. It really doesn't necessarily look like much. A humanoid frame. No bulging muscles. A large Japanese-style sword and another small one, both sheathed. Some obviously cybernetic hands and feet, and a Mempo-style porcelain mask on its head.

Despite that it positively radiates 'boss monster' energy, and you feel as if your mind is being pressed into a nonrespondent puddle by its proximity. The painted irises stare right back at you as you look at it, somehow transferring the sensation of barely restrained death despite being inanimate.

>How do you respond?
>Write-In

>>5511405
Interesting, that certainly explains the quest title and OP pic, thought we might be somewhere like that, didn't expect to end up in the control chamber though.

>>5511421
>Open up with a half faux-joking, half-plaintive manner in an attempt to distract and amuse him while getting us a few seconds further into this conversation. "Ah, alas this swan maiden has gotten lost and had her wings clipped, sir. I am ever at your mercy. Would you be so kind as to show me the exit? I am not ready to face you." Play up the somewhat chaotic/mischievous aspect our altered face gives us even if we have to force it a bit and make it clear we are faking the calmness/bravery but hope to amuse him enough for him to let us live/give us info.

Alternatively just say something like "Ah, hi there! Sorry, I got lost! It's the honest truth. Can you show me the exit?" or maybe play up our bravery and say something bold and uncaring like "who the fuck are you and where am I?"

Rolled 63 (1d100)

>>5511435
Forgot to roll.

Rolled 22 (1d100)

>>5511435
Not a bad way and a good back up.

>>5511421
Another thought I have when I look at this is how we were touched by that goddess. Makes me think we say "Touched more like cursed!" Then pulling the truth of we kind of just woke up here and thing are crap from the beginning till now. Is it as more of an angle to get in closer and get information. Tho this comes with a risk of him just ending us. Poor bastard is curse and can't be help, RIP.

>>5511456
Using it as more*

Moving to fast on the phone always getting me. Yet there's no time when you gotta go.

Etherway goal is to probe the person and with luck they will not be an enemy for now.

I think if shit goes south we should attempt to fast equip some equipment looted from the Identifier we just looted and try and at least show some piss and vinegar before we go down. Assuming that is how Identifiers work in this quest at all and that I am even remembering BSO correctly.

Rolled 44 (1d100)

>>5511479
Never go down without a fight. Unless it's the run as hard as you can and get away with it.

Rolled 57 (1d100)

Testing something real quick.

>>5511764
Neat.

Rolled 56 (1d100)

>>5511421

Your mind runs at a mile a minute, as you look into the painted eyes of the man-shaped monster standing over you. Strange, actually, that they're painted rather than being cameras. You wonder how it sees, if it does. Surely it does, or else the room wouldn't be lit.

"Your boldness is inspirational, even if your wisdom is arguable. I would have your name, before I send you to rest in oblivion along with your goddess."

His silent dismissal of his prospects, his overwhelming presence, you being covered in mud and laying on the ground at his feet...It all reminds you too much of the same powerlessness you felt as your mom was slipping away despite your best efforts.

The thought sets fire to your thoughts, and suddenly you feel angry. All the stress and frustration from months of helplessness, the shock of your loss that you still haven't properly had time to process, and the emotions you'd bottled up for the sake of survival all transmute into a storm of fury in a heartbeat. What the fuck is this? First you get dealt a shit hand in life, and now things are going to repeat themselves in this goddamn game? No. You refuse. You might be helpless in the real world but you refuse to let this be your f̷a̶t̶e̵ here.

The figure shifts a bit, and then calmly places its hand on the tanto hanging off its waist.

"I like that look in your eyes, girl. Those are the eyes of someone who fights...I can respect that, even if you are weak."

You grit your teeth and channel your anger into your words. You briefly consider responding with formal english, playing to the samurai aesthetic going on here. In the end you're too mad to do so.

"Who the fuck am I? I'm Sibyllan. More importantly, who the fuck are YOU? And where am I? And where's the exit? I've got no quarrel with you, so if you'll just let me out of here then I'll let you go unscathed this time!"

Rolled 69 (1d100)

>>5511774

The samurai continues to stare you down for a moment, porcelain mask unchanging, and then throws back its head and lets out an uproarious laugh. Its hands go to its stomach rather than its sword, and you notice that the luminescent tattoos on its grey skin twist and become mimics of its mask but bearing a mirthful expression.

"Hohoho, oh what a treat. Such defiance."

The figure raises a hand to its porcelain face as though to wipe a tear off. Despite the laughter issuing forth from...you know actually where is this thing speaking from? Anyway despite the act none of the body language to indicate joy is present. That paired with all the corpses surrounding you lends it an incredibly menacing quality that threatens to smother your flash of anger.

You take the opportunity to finally stand up, and realize that this guy towers over you. Solidly eight feet tall at least...

The giant finally gets himself under control, and offers you a bow.

"My name is Teppelin, and I am the 7th Warmaster. Though present circumstances have left me largely excused from the responsibilities of management."

You're nailed in place by its gaze again, feeling that same pressure seeming to push your entire consciousness into a corner of your brain.

"And unfortunately I cannot simply let you leave. Though it seems you ended up here by accident, I have been given a sacred duty to act as a trial to those who would pass through here.

...That being said, you lack the usual qualifications, and you've also provided some amusement. I haven't had such a laugh in a long time, and fortunately for you my god, Kartikeya, allows his subjects initiative in the way they execute their duties. His domain is life and struggle as well as war, and I think it fitting that you be given the chance to grow rather than being reaped right now.

If you can provide me a suitable offering," the giant's immobile face manages to project a knowing demeanor somehow, "then I can offer you a choice between 3 trials."

"You can leave this room via the door over there. I will send a hunter after you, defeat it or evade it until you escape the Infinite Slaughter. There is actually a settlement just one cable crossing away, follow the signs for 'Ascheritte's Respite' and you'll find it.

You can leave via the teleporter. It will send you to a place where your goddess once made her home. Nothing will actively pursue you by default, but finding the nearest settlement should serve as sufficient trial nonetheless.

Or...You can stay here and face me. Your life is also an acceptable offering, as far as I am concerned."

Well...that's better than you expected. What a strangely talkative NPC, let alone being able to react to a situation like this with such nuance. It's disturbing, even. Anyway, time to make your choice.

Rolled 89 (1d100)

>>5511793

>Sucker punch this fucker, and take the choice to fight him implicitly. You won't let him dictate your path or take your Shard.
>Take his offer to escape through the door. Whatever this hunter is, you'll know that it's coming for you and you know what it takes to get away.
>Take his offer to go through the teleporter. Being cast into the wilderness is honestly just maintaining the status quo from where you were at before you stumbled into the boss room, and that's a massive net positive from your current situation.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>5511795
If the suitable offering is our Shard I'm going with the fighting option. Feels in character at the moment. What with the feeling of mother when we got it and our anger.

Otherwise with our regeneration and hopefully newly acquired experience and/or abilities I think it is possible to do ether one. So I'll leave it to dice with 1 being hunt and 2 being teleport.

Rolled 100 (1d100)

>>5511821
Now for the normal roll. If it's a fight I hope we go down strong. Make momma proud.

Rolled 97 (1d100)

>>5511823
kek

I'll honor this somehow no matter which option you take, but if you engage in combat then rolling performance for that will still be done separately.

>>5511795
> Teleporter

Could be lots of beasties to harvest from, and we've got regeneration to help survive the wilds with.

And a temple might have an exit altar even.

>>5511795
>Take his offer to go through the teleporter. Being cast into the wilderness is honestly just maintaining the status quo from where you were at before you stumbled into the boss room, and that's a massive net positive from your current situation.
We get put in the wilderness we get some more time to level our skills and steal some new flesh materials. Fighting probably means death, our health is so low we could've only taken five hits from a Scavanger before dying and I doubt this man would give us time to use our regeneration.

Rolled 65 (1d100)

>>5511826
Then to clarify well I shard be taken if we don't fight? If we are keeping the shard then me dice rolled hunter.

Unless you are going to be coy about it. Which I can understand hidding certain things on the players. in which case. f*** that s*** let's fight and protect what Mama Gave Us!

Rolled 58 (1d100)

>>5511875
A shard will be taken if you don't fight. Of course who knows, maybe it'll be taken even if you do fight too. You could understand that, you might consider fighting someone if you knew they had a Shard...

Consensus is going through the teleporter though. Writan' it up now.

>>5511879
Yeah always the chance to lose something when defeated. Thanks for the answers and now a new side mission.

File: teleporter.jpg (24 KB, 350x350)

24 KB JPG

Rolled 74 (1d100)

>>5511795

So far as you can tell it's: certain death, somewhat less certain death, and a delay on death. A delay in which you might accomplish any number of things. Time is on your side.

"I'll take the option that lets me live a little longer, please."

Tepellin continues to stare at you.

"That was a...I'll do the teleporter, I mean."

"Your tithe then, Sibyllan."

You grimace and pull out your Identifier.

>[[ Identifier: Sibyllan ]]
>[[ Storage ]]
-Shard of Tiamet
-Prime Scav Tail

You focus on the shard, and it manifests before you. Its pure light...is actually tinged somewhat green. Like the most achingly beautiful emerald that could possibly exist. It causes you physical pain as Tepellin reaches out and grabs it.

His posture becomes playful, and he tilts his head slightly. The masks in his luminescent tattoos smile again.

"And lend me your weapon for a moment. This offering should be made to the gods, but I have some small skill granted by my Lord. He enjoys amusement as much as I, I don't think he'll fault me for this."

You hand him your trusty pipe, and he takes it in one hand while holding the viridian jewel in the other. He shatters the jewel in his fist, causing you to gasp and then grit your teeth, but it seems it's not truly destroyed. Sparks flow over and into the pipe. Infusing it with a feeling of sturdiness and reality that you hadn't realized it lacked before. The rust is gone now too, instead the dull steel has acquired a faint golden sheen.

The process is over in a few seconds, and he hands the pipe back to you.

>[[ Sibyllan acquired: Tepellin's Teacher ]]

The notification appears and you pull up the detailed information.

>[[ Tepellin's Teacher ]]
[Relic] - Relic weapons are very difficult to break, and cannot be enhanced, repaired, or modified without Godly power.
[Master's Teaching] - This weapon guides you as you wield it, allowing you to accumulate weapon skill experience.

"Return to me when you are stronger, Traveler Sibyllan. I look forward to offering you a proper trial."

You're not sure whether to be pissed or grateful, so you just opt to give the...android? Cyborg? Man? a nod. He returns the nod, and leads you to a raised dais of some unidentifiable metal or stone material some way away. It is conspicuous for being the only area in the rather spacious room that is devoid of dead bodies.

Tepellin stops, and gives you a pat on the back. Argh!

>[HP 15/17]

The pat practically shoves you onto the dais, and immediately feel your entire being wrenched apart. It is the same sort of agony as when the drop of silver fell on you in the chair, but a million times worse. You feel as though your body is being disassembled atom by atom. The indescribable pain thankfully only lasts for a moment before you succumb to unconsciousness.

Rolled 11 (1d100)

Gonna take a few hours to flesh out the new zone properly. Try not to stumble straight to the end of this one right away.

>>5509167
,':^y

Rolled 50 (1d100)

Should get the next update out this afternoon or evening. Thanks to all you guys that are playing!

File: encounter_by_landobaldur_(...).jpg (222 KB, 1414x565)

222 KB JPG

Rolled 74 (1d100)

>>5511904

You awaken groggily, your mind sluggish and body faintly aching all over. It reminds you of the times you woke up after trying to obliterate your problems with the bottle. You're sprawled flat on some large metal surface, probably a duplicate of the pad Tepellin pushed you onto.

"Dammit, you should've gone with the Hunter or fighting that fuck. No way dying would've been as painful as that teleportation..." You murmur to no one in particular.

You crack open your bleary eyelids, and see a handful of system messages floating in front of you.

>[[ Worldship Charybdis: Water Reclamation and Natural Park ]]
>[[ Congratulations, Sibyllan! You are the first User to discover this region. Exploration EXP increased. ]]
>[[ You have 1 EXP to spend. ]]
>[[ Status: Dizzy ]]

You grimace, and force yourself to your feet. Your sense of balance is terribly off, as if your body is somewhat off center to where you remember it being. It's an incredibly unpleasant sensation but once you realize what's going on you're able to compensate for it. Once up, you take a look around.

Below you is exactly what you expected, a dais that perfectly mimics the one in the Infinite Slaughter's control room exactly. Everything else couldn't be more different.

Instead of a dim room inside a starship, you're enclosed on 3 sides by greyish wood covered in pale white vines bearing faintly luminescent leaves. There's an opening in one direction, cloaked by a combination of vines and roots as thick as building columns. You move that way, and peak your head out.

Turns out you're in a small alcove underneath a huge tree. It stands alone in the middle of a small clearing, through a light fog you see that you're surrounded by much smaller trees that resemble mangroves. Sunlight streams through the canopy of leaves above and around you, you note that they're all dripping wet. What you originally took to be fog outside of your pagoda turns out to be swarms of tiny insects. The ground around you is barren of undergrowth, composed instead of a tangled mass of roots growing through greyish mud. You smell the distinctive odors of rot, stagnant water, and humidity.

"Oh great, it's a swamp. I HATE swamps."

Sighing, you go back to the dais room. The luminescent leaves of the vines around you, not-too-tight confines, and lack of small biting insects actually make the space almost cozy. You're not fooled. You've hardly gone 60 seconds without having to struggle for your life in this game so far. You check every nook and cranny of the place, shifting vines and such aside to make sure there are no bore holes from some horrid termite monsters or something. Only afterwards do you finally sit down again, and open up your inventory to see what loot you got from poor Arturion.

Rolled 20 (1d100)

>>5513126

It's a pretty decent haul, actually. You quickly equip the items, they're summoned directly onto you. First, a long and sturdy jacket of some sort of leather, that's had dark metal plates applied to critical areas on the outside and mail of the same woven into the inner lining. It's got a strange holster of some sort integrated onto the shoulder, you're not sure what for. Then, a pair of cargo pants with a silky finish that resist your movement ever so slightly whenever you move. They have a belt integrated into them that's actually a cable of some sort and has a universal interface jack on the end. Apparently it's magnetized, or can be, since you can stick your Trusty Pipe to it. Finally, a pair of simple boots. They're perfectly sized to you.

There's also a crossbow made out of polymer and carbon fiber, the design incorporates two bows arranged in an X pattern that are very compact, making it feel more like a rifle than crossbow. It fits into a holster on your back. Finally, there's a simple knife made made of black-finished metal. You situate it on your offhand hip, opposite Tepellin's Teacher.

You breathe a sigh of relief as you're no longer just in a skin-tight jumpsuit. You like the figure of your avatar as much as anyone, but there's just no replacing the feeling of having something substantial between you and the things trying to murder you. Then you take a glance at your revised status.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQLzwnol2kw8u_XSYUZ9lZ6U7IyF7z5VFgWSTO2Ch5R9Mr4jXgnS_bI2HJf2LbuYF_yowjmds-vYj3b/pub

You walk over to a puddle of water near the entrance to the room and look at yourself in the reflection.

"Lookin good!" You give yourself some finger guns. Then you frown.

"Should you be worried that you're talking to yourself, Syb?"

You shelve the thought to ponder later, and instead consider what you should do next. You're isolated in a swamp with no real notion of where you're at, where to go, or what's around you after all.

>Climb the tree that you're under to try and get an overview of this place.
>Observe the area outside your lair for a while. No way there aren't monsters here.
>The canopy around you is thick, but you think you can make out a tower or something far off in the distance. Head that way.
>Other?

Rolled 91 (1d100)

>>5513175

Also

>Spend EXP Now (Choose a Mastery)
>Wait until you know more about this place

>>5513175
>Climb the tree that you're under to try and get an overview of this place.
Specifically try to confirm if what we think is a tower actually is a tower or something else entirely. Also, try and see if we can find a path that leads in that direction.

>>5513177
>Spend EXP Now (Choose a Mastery)
[Fleshcrafting] > [Symbiosis]
With a Crossbow, Knife and a less rusty pipe we're set on weapons right now, so I think we can skip Wolverine claws for now. We only have so many hands to hold weapons with after all. If we're lucky there are some low level creatures around, or corpse piles we can use to begin building minions with.

Rolled 51 (1d100)

>>5513175
>Climb the tree that you're under to try and get an overview of this place.
Got know the new home ground and then hopefully not get lost when we leave.

>>5513177
Since we got the upgraded pipe. I can agree to Symbiosis. There will be living things to make use of here.

>>5513177
>Climb Tree
>Spend EXP Now (Choose a Mastery)
Symbiosis is good yep

>>5513177
> Spend EXP

> Alchemy - Compounding

The ability to make drugs and medicines sounds useful, and it's a pre req for making our own flesh beasties

Rolled 10 (1d100)

>>5513358
Well, Augmentoids are actually the flesh beasties really. There's actually some (probably needless) complexity to the crafting that you guys haven't discovered yet.

I was planning on having someone experienced explain it to you once you hit a settlement but, uhhh, that didn't really work out...

>>5513175
>Climb the tree and have a look
>Spend EXP on [Symbiosis]

For no particular reason at all, give me 1d100 please

Rolled 96 (1d100)

>>5513375
Not long until we make some abominations and I have to deal with our berserking creations.

>>5513375
Ahh, I was aiming at Biomass Reassembly. I guess that's the upgrade power for our little pets.

Rolled 29 (1d100)

>>5513396
>>5513386
As a general rule, Augmentoids are the living critters you create. Fleshcrafting outside of your own body (whereas Corpus Manipulation is fleshcrafting inside yourself), but there are restrictions on it because otherwise it'd get ridiculous quick. Your peculiar situation obviates some of those restrictions, but in turn you don't know how it works so you can't capitalize on it.

Biomass Reassembly is a step towards combining augmentoid creation and corpus manipulation.

Anyway, writan'

File: Liminal Tree.jpg (253 KB, 1280x720)

253 KB JPG

Rolled 48 (1d100)

>>5513177
>>5513175

You elect to climb the tree and get a better sense of direction. No point walking around when you've got no idea where you're actually going.

The tree you landed under is truly massive. You hear there used to be groves of huge trees up in some mountains a long time ago, giants that would strike awe in all those that saw them and teach them lessons in what resilience really means. As you recall, those were in the low hundreds of feet tall. This one, meanwhile, has got to be getting close to a thousand. As you get above the level of the lesser trees (which were all still solidly huge by real world standards) you realize that what you had assumed to be sunlight coming through the canopy is actually being generated from several orbs hanging down from the branches of the megatree. They're like gigantic glowing berries, implausibly bright and impossibly huge. If there's true sunlight in this place, then it's above the level of that canopy up there...but this ceiling of vegetation populated by bright yellow dots seems to stretch on as far as the eye can see. It looks more like an eerie impenetrable wall of branches and leaves than something natural, from this distance anyway.

Still, you need to get up there. Fortunately aside from the staggering height it's not a difficult climb. The bark is fibrous, tough, and grows in huge furrows that resemble Xs or perhaps a helix carved into the trunk. It makes for perfect handholds and footholds. It's also fairly populated with branches even at this level, and they're large enough to be more like roads than limbs. There are also tunnels carved into the trunk that vary in size from rodent holes all the way to gaping caverns that are easily several times your height. You have to rest on or in these several times as you proceed further up, but you remain thankfully unharassed by anything more dangerous than mosquitoes and gnats.

You don't actually go to the top of the tree, partially because it's unnecessary and partially because you're finding it increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that you'll have to make your way back down... Once you breach the berry-spotted canopy, you realize that it's situated about halfway up the total height of the massive tree. You're finally given a chance to really look out over the landscape.

File: 1672201453016790.png (904 KB, 1032x774)

904 KB PNG

Rolled 51 (1d100)

>>5513458

Stretched out before you is largely a carpet of green, pierced in dozens of locations by the spires of trees every bit equal to the one you sit on now. Above it all sits a holographic sun tinged the orange of sunset. Although far above trees, it sits below what appears to be a blue sky that's dotted with clouds every here and there. You can't tell from this distance if they're real or also holograms. They slowly move across the sky, throwing shadows onto the blue ceiling above in a strange reversal of expectations. You stare for a while, soaking it in.

"You know, people'd kill for a view like this in the real world. Or they'd pay more money than it would've taken to save mom a hundred times over, just to visit."

Shit, you really need to knock this talking to yourself habit. You haven't even been alone in here for that long, even if it seems like an age from all the stress. You give yourself a couple of good smacks on the cheeks and then gather yourself to get to work. If the sun's fading, who knows if there's night here too.

You thoroughly explore and observe all around your particular megatree, gathering as much info as you can both of the area above the canopy and below. It takes several hours, but thankfully your luck with regards animals holds. You see things moving several times, but are always able to hide yourself before they can detect you. With the exception of some rather cute octopus looking things, that you stumble upon several times as you climb around. They squirt ink angrily, and promptly fall to lower branches whenever you do so. Fuckers shouldn't hide so well if they don't want to get stepped on.

>Acquired Gene-Traces: [Leafy Squidskin], [Ink Squirter]

Finally you assemble a cohesive picture of the area.

It's largely divided into 2 layers. The Megatree canopy, receiving the light of the false sun, and the undercanopy/swamp that receives its light from the glowberries growing off the megatrees.

The megatrees all seem to be the same species, and are common enough that the upper canopy forms almost a solid cover as far as you can see, barring a few patchy sections where the gaps between tree trunks is particularly large and branches are accordingly less dense. There are 4 megatrees that are distinct from the rest and each other, and they stand head and shoulders above the common variety in terms of size.

File: Desert Fissiotree.jpg (103 KB, 1024x576)

103 KB JPG

Rolled 97 (1d100)

>>5513489

The first is in a direction you've arbitrarily decided to call 'south'. It has silvery bark and dark purple leaves, creating a beautiful contrast. Rather than glowberries, it bears delicate flowers that are each an iridescent riot of colors growing on its branches.

File: sylvanas-windrunner-fire-(...).jpg (63 KB, 729x310)

63 KB JPG

Rolled 39 (1d100)

>>5513490

The next lies to the east, it's the closest and the 'tower' you saw from your vantage point on the ground. Its bark is dark as pitch, but contrasts against spots of furious orange where the bark breaks. It looks just like the embers of a fire are held inside by a carbonized crust. You'd think it just a burning husk, but it bears regular leaves as well, indicating there's still some form of life going on.

File: 1909d05ec6aa75636c5c43069(...).jpg (43 KB, 735x330)

43 KB JPG

Rolled 20 (1d100)

>>5513493

The third is to the West, and it...you find it difficult to look at. Lights of various colors, many of which you don't have names for, slowly migrate across its bark. Well, you assume it's bark but there's something profoundly wrong about the entire forest in that direction. There are even what appear to be islands or trees floating above the canopy in the area around it.

File: 8c55af1e1f17da8031eed05a3(...).jpg (123 KB, 667x1000)

123 KB JPG

Rolled 24 (1d100)

>>5513495

The final one is in the South. It's skeletal, absolutely devoid of leaves. Slits that are shaped disturbingly like eyes bleed pale blue light, and the branches come up to cradle a gigantic metal cube.

File: maxresdefault.jpg (96 KB, 1280x720)

96 KB JPG

Rolled 56 (1d100)

>>5513490
>>5513493
>>5513495
>>5513497

Aside from being even larger than the megatrees that compose most of the giant forest these four are exceptional for another reason. Each of them has what appears to be the framework for a lift ascending out of them and up into the ceiling.

In the time it's taken you to explore and get a grasp on the shape of your surroundings the sun has gradually waned from its original yellow, down to orange, and now finally turns black. All that remains is a dim and ghostly halo of white, providing barely enough light to see. The glowberries around you also dim their brightness, though they still put off plenty of light to leave your surroundings in a twilight state.

It...makes everything quite a bit more intimidating and creepy, to be honest. The four Supertrees are now the only major sources of light above the soft glow of the middle canopy. As you watch them you notice the tree of Eldritch Horror shake. Then the other 3 do as well. Within a few minutes, you hear a tremendous roar as well.

Acting on some instinct you descend below the canopy, into the twilight between the intertwined branches of the megatrees and the floor of mangroves. Except you can't see the mangroves any more, instead all you see is a swirling flood of black water. Black water that's steadily rising. A tremendous deluge of proportions you can't comprehend, in order to inundate a space this large. It continues to rise higher and higher, until it's only perhaps a hundred feet from the underside of the canopy.

You shiver, realizing that you only narrowly avoided getting caught in the deluge. Even now you can see that some of the lower hanging glowberries got caught and ripped off in the intense current. Damn, those mangroves must have incredibly strong roots to stay put through all that.

You look at the lights in the water as they swirl around almost as if they're alive, and get a bad feeling about them for some reason. It takes you a minute to put it together, but then you realize. The glowberries were orange, but those lights in the water are blue.

In a flash something enormous, angular, and clearly artificial is flung from the surface of the water and towards you. Your heart seizes up in your chest and time seems to slow down. The thing thrown at you is a huge harpoon, tethered to something in the water by a chain. You're powerless to dodge as it inches its way closer to you, and then bites into the sweet flesh of a glowberry scarcely a dozen feet away.

The chain grows taught and pulls the berry down into the water. You catch a brief glimpse as it's pulled down into the dark, and see the suggestion of...it looks like half mechanical whale, half submarine. Dotted with glowing blue lights almost like some deep sea creature. The silhouette is burned into your terrified eyes in the split-second of illumination before it gobbles up the glowberry.

Then another one, even larger, swims between the harpooner and the surface.

Rolled 31 (1d100)

>>5513506

You nope right the fuck out of there, and climb into a hidey hole above the canopy you ID'd earlier. You try to sleep, but the sound of tremendous splashes from below, buzzing assault of insects, and thoughts of what could've become of you if you hadn't decided to climb the tree to scout things out all consume you...until they don't anymore, and you lose consciousness without even realizing it.

You wake up to the first rays of yellow from a synthetic sun, and the sound of water rushing away. It's strange to wake up from sleep and not feel any thirst, hunger, or other bodily needs.

"Is this really any less of a death sentence than facing a boss monster solo at level one?" You wonder aloud. Despair almost threatens to grip you, but you manage to shake it off.

After all, luck seems to be on your side almost as much as it damns you. Perhaps you'll make it out of this alive, yet. And if not...maybe the penalty for death won't be so bad?

Pfft, yeah right. Like you'd be that lucky.

No use giving up before you even try though.

>Descend the tree, and try to find some weak monsters to grind while exploring the swamp/forest floor. Maybe there'll be some easy pickings that drowned last night.
>Explore the nearby canopy, looking for suitable prey and secrets.
>Stay in your comfortable little hidey hole and cry while lamenting your lot in life and VR.
>Start exploring in the direction of one of the supertrees (Which one)
>You know, what was up with that one weird thing from Arturion's inventory...
>Other?

Rolled 4 (1d100)

>>5513511
Well, I was sadly busy and missed several votes, but it's fine since the votes turned out the way I would've wanted anyhow.

I wanna wander solo with this zone all to ourselves for a while, really make it our own. It'd be cool if by the time we reach a settlement we are so strong and so inundated with unique map knowledge that we can overawe the players and instantly get a slot among whatever passes for the 'elite' in the community.

What is the 'weird thing' being preferred to in the prompt? The familiar? The 300#? I thought that was his player number ID or something. His distraction spike?

Guessing Arturion was a Netrunner, possibly a Techseer.

>Grab one of the giant glowberries for its gene-trace before anything else, maybe take a taste as well. Can you taste food in this game?

then...

>Descend the tree, and try to find some weak monsters to grind while exploring the swamp/forest floor. Maybe there'll be some easy pickings that drowned last night.

also...

>Try and observe the lower ecosystem before going about disrupting it with a bunch of noise, try and find hidden predators and prey, see how they operate in their natural environment and what they are afraid of. Get a sense of the ecology.

>>5513511
Also, I think the googledoc has a mistake. In the abbreviated mastery list closer to the top it correctly shows us with one level in both Corpus Manipulation and Symbiosis, but in the expanded list below with some of the bold text it shows us as having two levels in Corpus Manipulation and none in Symbiosis. Maybe you meant to put the 2 next to Fleshcrafting to show our total investment in that tree but instead you put it next to a branch of that tree?

Rolled 50 (1d100)

>>5513519
300# is the credits

>>5513520
Actually the abbreviated list is the skills/masteries you currently have, whereas the longer list below is the list of what you have available. So [Symbiosis Lvl 2] is what should be down there. Whereas the upper list is correct as is.

Thanks for pointing that out!

Rolled 17 (1d100)

>>5513526
Got the doc lookin' much more clean.
>https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQLzwnol2kw8u_XSYUZ9lZ6U7IyF7z5VFgWSTO2Ch5R9Mr4jXgnS_bI2HJf2LbuYF_yowjmds-vYj3b/pub

Rolled 39 (1d100)

>>5513511
>You know, what was up with that one weird thing from Arturion's inventory...
I'm assuming this is the familiar. Probably best to have something to talk to if we're already talking to ourselves. And it shouldn't take too long, we can begin moving to something else once we figure out how it works.

Rolled 21 (1d100)

>>5513511
I like the idea of testing food with the berry. See if we still gain anything from eating. Then check inventory just saw the [Rocksworth, Stone Familiar] and the Identifier.

Then next bit after it will be time to explore. If eating help us means now we can get more that just genes.

The doc be full of new upgrades. I do like the idea of having Remote Viewing, but it's gonna be a while. [Ferrous Coagula, Active 20CC] would be fun to craft things from iron, cool something, and maybe use it to lock targets down as well.

Rolled 28 (1d100)

>>5513519

Yeah, I'll support this.

Did we spend our exp point and get Symbiosis?

>>5513519
>I wanna wander solo with this zone all to ourselves for a while, really make it our own
Reject civilization, become mysterious forest dweller with flesh minions. I wonder if we would be able to carve out homes in the trees with the same skills we would use to make flesh minions in the future.

So we have four regions, excluding the central one we're in right now. Four distinct biomes with a tree to guard each, and at the center is a mysterious tower. If that's not a loot tower with goodies in it I will eat my hat, probably has some sort of mechanic that requires an offering from each biome tree in order to unlock it. Could open just a loot chamber or a complete dungeon with a boss and all. Whatever we do, staying where we are and fucking around is our best bet right now so we can find out what we need to find out before we attempt moving to the other regions, so I'll back the choices made and adding on that we should try to sculpt a flesh minion as soon as so we can to be better protected.

>>5513726
[Intimate Knowledge] together with [Sympathetic Link] is how we power up minions, especially looking forward to that. Particularly implanting [Forced Evolution] in a minion when we've become a better Fleshcrafter could lead to some insane mid-late quest minions. We'll most likely also need [Biomass Reassembly] to craft near-perfect minions too.
Getting some more points in to Corpus Manipulation so we can build better minions is a thought, Wolverine Claws + Iron Body/Superdense Marrow + High Level Regeneration and Hormonal Doping would give us quite the melee monster. For a ranged alternative if we're lucky we could combine the Ink Squirter trace with Ferrous Coagula, maybe even just incorporate Ferrous Coagula directly into the spittle of a melee creature. Imagine you're fighting some girl and her pets, and you get bitten but your wound immediately combusts and turn to Iron while setting the flesh and clothing around it on fire instantly! That's a guaranteed moral break if I've ever seen one, much more original than the basic poison attacks you could expect from this class.

Rolled 18 (1d100)

>>5513511
>You know, what was up with that one weird thing from Arturion's inventory...(check out Rocksworth)
>Do Glowberries taste like Glowberries?
[Locked], writan'.

Oh, throw me 1d100 Bo2 for no particular reason please.

File: dark_matter_variants_by_d(...).jpg (104 KB, 1314x608)

104 KB JPG

Rolled 29 (1d100)

>>5513746
Maybe I was a bit unclear (it was ~0300 at the time), but actually the towers are emerging from the tops of each of the 4 trees have elevators emerging from them and heading up to the ceiling. You're currently in a central dead zone without any special super trees influencing the local flora or fauna.

Actually Ferrous Coagula makes things super cold, so their limb'd freeze and then possibly break off.

Glad to see people theorycrafting though. Warms my heart!

You'll need every bit to survive, let alone be successful. You're incredibly lucky to have rolled a 96 on climbing and exploring the tree. It's going to be a delight seeing how you guys strategize to make it through all this.

Rolled 35 (1d100)

>>5513886
Whichever way the reaction were to go, it's sure to cause serious shock and instantly take people out of the fight. And yes, you did mention the elevators but I was groogy from waking up so I must've separated the two somehow.

>>5513881
Dice time.

Rolled 97 (1d100)

>>5513881
Rollin' the other dice so we can get this through.

Rolled 100 (1d100)

>>5513511
>>5513881

First you'll check out that weird thing you picked up from poor dead Arturion. You summon Rocksworth, and a polished grey stone about the size of your hand and a few inches thick materializes in your palm. It has a small speaker glued on haphazardly, a cable spool ending in a universal jack, and a chunky low res black-and-grey LCD display on an actuator. The display has a cheap little black-and-white plastic tophat that's entirely too small glued to the top. It's currently displaying a pair of gleeful looking pair of eyes. You stare at the rock, trying to decipher its secrets.

"Aah! Finally free! You got yours in the end, cursed Arturion!" it says.

The sudden voice that isn't your own nearly makes you jump out of your own skin. The rock is thrown into the air and you juggle it between your hands a couple times, only barely grabbing ahold of it before it tumbles out of your little hiding place and into oblivion or worse at the bottom of the tree. The rock makes several "ach!" sounds throughout the whole process and by the time you have a solid grasp on it again the eyes have shifted to a look of terrified apprehension.

"Could you be more fuckin careful with me, please?! Gods above, this isn't how I imagined my freedom going..."

"Hahaha, oh god yeah I'm definitely going crazy...wow, that escalated from talking to myself way faster than I expected...I could've sworn you just talked..."

"Whoa now choom, you may be crazy but I'm actually talking too. Name's Rocksworth, but my friends call me 'Rocky'. It's a pleasure to meetcha...whoever you are, and thanks for rescuing me from my indentured servitude, but if you'd kindly deposit me at an access point in the nearest settlement I'll be getting on my way..."

>[Choose as many as you'd like]
>Uhh, well see I'd love to but you've kinda ended up in an unexplored region and you and I are the only ones around...
>How am I talking to a rock?
>Pleased to meet you, Rocky. I'm Sibyllan, and unfortunately I have some bad news...
>Toss the rock over the edge. You don't need your psychosis worsening like this.
>I can do that for you, but you're gonna have to help me too. See, here's the situation...
>Other?

=====

You quickly discover that the strange holster you had on your should is custom designed to hold Rocksworth, or Rocky, or your hallucination, whatever it is. You place him there or possibly throw him over the ledge and as you continue your conversation with him you also head downwards through the canopy. You've decided you'd like to try out one of the glowberries. If giant robot whales find them so delicious, maybe you will too.

Rolled 85 (1d100)

>>5513933
Haha, oh man. These fuckin' dice gods. They're getting back at me for not running anything for a while.

Rolled 95 (1d100)

>>5513933

Your good luck with regards to creatures continues to hold. In fact, it's almost suspiciously quiet around here. You wonder if the native creatures know something you don't. Setting your paranoia aside for now, you quickly find an ideal glowberry for your culinary adventure. Its stem is easily the thickness of your torso, and it's growing off the side of one of the wider road-like branches rather than from the bottom of it. Moreover it has a particularly pleasing orange-yellow color, looking like a horse-sized blackberry made of hammered gold.


"What are you doing, Sibyl?"

"I'm gonna harvest some of that berry and see how it tastes."

"Aah, yes. Taste-testing the giant glowing alien berry of the supertree in the alien death swamp. Roger that, carry on."

It's your first time approaching one of these, and as you get closer you realize...they're actually really fuckin bright. And really fuckin hot too. You have to shield your eyes awkwardly as you descend the stem, and as you get closer you begin to be buffeted by waves of heat. By the time you land the updraft from pure heat is strong enough to blow your coattails around. You're actually being cooked alive, and you almost feel like the bottom of your boots are melting. Too far in to turn back now though.

>[HP 18/20]
>[Status: Overheated]

Okay, no time for a leisurely picnic then. You quickly take Tepellin's Teacher in hand while still shielding your eyes and thrust it into the berry. The flesh is almost gelatinous, and the metal of the pipe immediately gets hot enough to scald your hands.

You reattach it to your belt in a frenzy of blistering palms, thankful that you had to foresight to plug one end with some vines you'd collected to use as cordage on the way over. You trigger your electroweave and jump straight up 8 feet or so, then scramble back up the stem and onto the wide road-branch with the sort of haste only someone that's being cooked alive can employ.

>[HP 16/20]
>[Status: Severe Burns, Overheated]
>[CC 40/110]
>[CC 39/110]
>[CC 38/110]...

You lay gasping atop the branch as you recover from the exertion, watching as your CC usage gradually ticks back to its baseline.

But you have your prize! And oh, it smells so sweet!

>>5513933
>Pleased to meet you, Rocky. I'm Sibyllan, and unfortunately I have some bad news...
>Uhh, well see I'd love to but you've kinda ended up in an unexplored region and you and I are the only ones around...
>Though, be so kind as to fill me in on what you know about any settlements you've been to, I could use some help orientating myself.

>>5513933
>Pleased to meet you, Rocky. I'm Sibyllan, and unfortunately I have some bad news...
>Uhh, well see I'd love to but you've kinda ended up in an unexplored region and you and I are the only ones around...
>If you would be so kind, please, fill me in on any of the settlements you've been to and how they function. I could use the help orientating myself. (Maybe get the infodump on crafting and various system functions while we are at it)

Uh, did you delete my post for formatting? I didn't even know QMs could do that. Or was it just a glitch or something. I posted thinking the post with the prompts was the only post but ended up after your next story post, then it disappeared after I refreshed.

Anyways, some thoughts on our situation. One thing to keep in mind is the flood emanating from the eldritch tree. (the pic looks more techy to me than eldritch, makes me think there is a tech versus organic thing going on or something corresponding to the aesthetics of the four starting classes) Depending on whether it occurs on a daily cycle or some longer period then that puts a limit on the range of our exploration.* It means we HAVE to reach a megatree by the end of each day/flood cycle or face basically guaranteed death. For now that probably means sticking near this tree and farming creatures and then climbing to safety each night. Once we feel strong enough to venture forth then we should probably head to the nearest megatree in search of further answers regarding this biome/bosses to fight. It also may eventually be worth investigating the "eldritch tree".

Regarding our development, while I prefer to take the more "active" archetype of going the "protagonist" build involving investing more in the trees other than Medicine, I do think for this zone it is worth investing at least few points into the tree since we are far from any settlement and it would be nice to have independent access to the ability to craft buffs/cures for ourselves given this environment is probably rife with status effects, immunological tuning is also probably useful here. That is not to say that it should be our next investment, just that we get around to it eventually.

*Footnote after I went back to reread. I misremembered a bit. There is our current central megatree which has the teleport altar, but the species of tree isn't anything special, there are dozens of megatrees, and four special ones in the various cardinal directions. So our exploration range is still limited but not in the way I thought. I thought there were five megatrees, four of them special and one central one which is where we currently were. Now that I reread I understand that while we still have to reach a megatree well before night or whenever the flood comes and started climbing since it takes time to get above the level where we will be safe, but we don't have to huddle around our current tree and try and force march our way to one of the special trees in a single day like I thought we did.

>>5513953
>>5513965
wtf, now it showed up...well I guess I'll delete the first one.

Rolled 14 (1d100)

>>5513953
>>5513952
>>5513933

"Pleased to meet you, Rocky. I'm Sibyllan. Aah, so about getting you to the nearest town..."

The rock uses its actuator to nod at you, expectantly.

"Well, you see, a thing or two happened...and now you and I are pioneers! Brave new explorers, going where no one has gone before!"

The rock nods again, but this time its eyes tilt somewhat to the side and have a skeptical look to them. You carry on with your explanation.

"That is to say, we're in the middle of a gigantic forest-swamp and when I arrived here the System told me that I was the first User to discover this region."

The stone nods its...eyes...a third time. This time they're closed serenely, and the gesture is accompanied by a sigh.

"Well...I can't say I didn't consider this outcome...Still, this is just my sort of luck. Ending up with a stranger in the middle of a death sentence.

I am physically and mentally incapable of giving up though, and compelled to be helpful. Two of the shackles that bastard put on me when I was created. So if there's anything I can do to help, just let me know. I do have some aptitude with hacking. Arturion dumped so much EXP and CC into being able to create me that he ended up weak in that area and used me to compensate. If you can find a network hub somewhere then I can likely get a proper map of this place.

Maybe even pull some historical data too, though the languages these guys used to use is still largely untranslatable. Never know when data'll come in handy though. For now, I'll dump a text file of what I know into your ID. "

>Ask Rocky some specific question

Will update the doc later with appropriate info. Also, argh lost most of my post. Rewriting now.

>>5513972
Going over good habits when exploring the unknowns. Nothing wrong with brushing up on the basics.

So are able to help with tech support. How are you with crafting meds or in general?

Rolled 59 (1d100)

>>5513952

You wait for the berry flesh to cool from flesh melting hot to piping-hot-pie temperature. It takes a surprisingly long time, you're back to full health, nominal CC, and your burns have been reduced to moderate by the time it's ready.

Your pour a bit out of the pipe and into your hands, for lack of any better options, then promptly slurp the jelly up.

Maybe it's because you haven't eaten anything since you logged in and have an empty stomach, but the taste is simply divine. You don't experience hunger, but there's still a psychological drive to eat and you haven't done so in more than a day. Combine that with this heavenly ambrosia you've discovered, and you swiftly lose control of yourself. Sooner than you can think, you're sitting on the road-branch with Tepellin's Teacher empty and a jelly-smeared content smile on your face.

Then there's a rumbling in your stomach.

You uhh, you don't feel so good all of a sudden. The rumble grows louder and is accompanied this time by a piercing pain in your abdomen. You double over from it and clutch your burnt, sugar(?) smeared arms over your slightly distended tummy. Oh man...oh maybe you ate that too fast.

>[Status: Moderate Burns, Severe Radiation Poisoning, Mutative Throes]

Or maybe it's fucking RADIATION POISONING. The pain intensifies, and you fall over. You think Rocky is saying something to you, some sort of warning, but it feels like all your senses are covered with gauze and your limbs are losing their strength. You fall off the edge...and miraculously onto the glowberry rather than out into nothingness.

You feel the berry shift under you, and then weightlessness again before a hard and wet slap. Then all you can feel is warm wetness all over your skin. You don't know if it's blood or berry juice, you can't spare the brainpower to think.

Instead all of your consciousness is focused on the writhing agony in your stomach. It's incredibly painful and your senses are all completely fuzzed over into uselessness now...but for some reason you feel as though your insight into your own body is heightened. As soon as you think so, you feel the radiation and compounds on an intuitive level, and you know that you can do something about it as well.

>The radiation is ripping through your DNA...but you realize that this can produce change rather than death if you can adapt. There's already a basis, you only need expand it.
>Your cells have already been enhanced to reproduce themselves after damage. All you need do to survive this is strengthen that capability.
>Although it will be a close run thing, you sense that you will survive this without the need for interference. Instead, you should develop a plan for how to tweak yourself when you recover.
>These gaps that are being created, don't they seem like they'd be perfect holes for something else to fill in?
>Forget this analysis of your flesh. It will survive, you're sure of it. Rather, delve deeper into your mind and this trance state.

Rolled 41 (1d100)

>>5513995

>Rocksworth
"The only real rules when exploring the unknown are to be observant and be lucky. Honestly this game is so wild, untamed, and unpredictable that there aren't really any solid rules to recommend. Oftentimes the slow-and-cautious approach just allows something to sneak up on you, but the quick-and-aggressive style would equally run you into trouble.

As for crafting meds, I'm no help there. Arturion was a Netrunner, so he wasn't clued into any of the crafting circles except as a purchaser. I do know that Organitech crafting generally requires you to find some sort of terminal, and that Organitechs were always looking (and willing to pay for info on) such terminals outside of settlements. I think they were called GLECKs? Anyway, that's all I know."

Rolled 91 (1d100)

I really need to tighten my writing up. Plenty of prose with nothing actually happening so far.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>5514014
From top to bottom the options seem most likely to result in the following skills getting a point placed in them, or causing a skill to take on a different form:
1: (Some form of?) Forced Evolution
2: Regeneration
3: (A free point in?) Corpus Manipulation
4: ???, it reads smiliarly to 1 in that it could lead to a different kind of Forced Evolution but other than that I am stumped for what it could be
5: (A free point in?) Any Neuromancy skill of our choice

I'm stuck between taking what I believe will give us the Neuromancy skill point and further developing Regeneration. Higher Regen means higher staying power in combat and would let us survive eating more strange things in this forest. It's also likely that it could mutate the skill in such a way that it lets us cleanse radiation poisoning much quicker than before.
Neuromancy however would be a good step on the path to minion making and the increase to CC would let us handle the material in this forest better, since we can assume after this bout of radiation overdose that most, if not all, types biomass carry some level of radiation in them, at least in the section we're currently in.

I'll simply roll a 1d2 to determine which one I'll vote for.
>1: Forget this analysis of your flesh. It will survive, you're sure of it. Rather, delve deeper into your mind and this trance state.
>2: Your cells have already been enhanced to reproduce themselves after damage. All you need do to survive this is strengthen that capability.

Rolled 88 (1d100)

Well we did get lucky.

>>5514014
>>Forget this analysis of your flesh. It will survive, you're sure of it. Rather, delve deeper into your mind and this trance state.

Been working on the body. Time to upgrade our mind and/or system that supports it.

Rolled 84 (1d100)

That being said and thinking more. I do want to see super regen. Coming back from a few cells would be nuts.

Rolled 57 (1d100)

>>5514089
>>5514040
>>5514128
I'll give this another hour or two before I start writing and/or do rolls to tie break.

>>5513972
Oh cool, that is the one thing I'd want to dip into cybernetic augments/software stuff for even at the cost of inefficient CC allocation. With Rocky we now don't need to worry about that. I was just worried about a whole realm of info, tactical options, and mode of play being cut off if we never had the option to interact or manipulation the infosphere. Physical cybernetic stuff is meh though.

>>5514014
Uh...

I think 4 is a unique...I can't find the right word...compatibility for cybernetics with the CC inefficiency, or for the merging of something alien into ourselves?

If 1 is forced evolution then normally I'd be against that so soon since I want to control that, but I think we might get some radiation related, which could be unique.

Regen would be good if we could get it up to something like 5 hp regen per...tick. Below that it is just a slow heal over time good for out of combat healing, but around that 5 hp mark I reckon we could insta-heal through some wounds and be really hard to put down even for murder machines that would normally blitz us. Depends on if this is an inordinate upgrade or just like a single exp spend.

I think I'm fine with any choice, except for 4 if I'm right about it.

>The radiation is ripping through your DNA...but you realize that this can produce change rather than death if you can adapt. There's already a basis, you only need expand it.

Rolled 4 (1d100)

>>5514014
>>5514140
Roll that I forgot.

Rolled 77 (1d100)

>>5514040
>>5514089
>>5514140

I'll say this much: none of these are upgrades you could/would get through normal, sane means.

Out of curiousity, what did you guys expect to happen from eating the giant glowing alienberries?

>>5514145
I assumed that we'd be set on fire due to their inordinate brightness and hence likely heat. I also thought we'd get some heat related or bio-luminescence type gene-trace. I also thought it would taste good, but I kept the possibility in mind that we'd taste nothing and thus suffer an existential crisis.

>>5514145
If there to be some effect from food, not this. I was thinking the glow is like a fire fly or something not hot. The fruit is just trying to attract things to eat it to spread the seeds.

Rolled 53 (1d100)

>>5514040
Rolling for Option 5
Versus 88 for Option 2
And 4 for Option 1

>>5514014
>Your cells have already been enhanced to reproduce themselves after damage. All you need do to survive this is strengthen that capability.
Wolverine style immortality is OP.

Rolled 86 (1d100)

>>5514014

>Your cells have already been enhanced to reproduce themselves after damage. All you need do to survive this is strengthen that capability.

Nothing matters except surviving this. Your mind rallies around this core thought. Intrinsic to you. Even when you no longer felt like living, you still couldn't stand to die. You'll be damned before you let some funny fruit do you in, game or not.

Ignoring everything else and concentrating on your burning desire to live, you watch as your cells are torn apart. Half of it is the radiation, the other half is some foreign substance that seems to throw cellular automata into disarray with intent and design.

Whatever the latter is, it far outclasses your current ability to tinker with your body. You get a premonition that it's not operating randomly, but cannot possibly glimpse the design it's aiming for. That's fine, you think, mentally glancing at the chunk of yourself that you did touch. The regeneration that even now is fighting for all its worth to keep you going. The more complicated the tool, the easier it is to break. Observing your adversaries, thinking and unthinking both, you get to work playing them against each other and into a trap.

=====

>[[ Worldship Charybdis: Water Reclamation and Natural Park ]]
>[Sibyllan]
>[Level 3]
>[HP: 26/22]
>[CC: 50/110]
>[Status: Light Burns, Overheated, Radiation Poisoning]

You wake, and surprisingly little time has passed. You're sprawled on one of the wide branches, staring up at the one you were on before perhaps 50 feet above you. You lay amidst an impact crater positively doused in Glowberry remains, just like you are. The orange jelly burns you, but as soon as it does the damage is repaired.

>[HP 25/22]
>[HP 26/22]
>[HP 26/22]

You feel terribly weak, probably the radiation sickness. You wipe the jelly off of yourself and step out of the burnt crater where the fruit fell. It still smells heavenly, but you no longer have an appetite to eat it.

>[Status: Light Burns]
>[HP: 18/22]

You cough up a torrent of blood, but the feeling of weakness goes away. You notice your CC is greater than your normal baseline, and deactivate your new skill as well...You take a moment to study it, and the new gene-traces you obtained.

"I guess that'll be a boon...but why does this game keep subjecting me to actual agony..."

"Art asked the same thing actually." a voice on your left shoulder, you flinch and instinctively pull your angled piece of pipe off your belt as you drop into the best defensive stance you know (which is none). Still, you're quick.

Oh right, it's just Rocky. You forgot there, what with going through...what did you go through again? You remember two enemies, one thinking and one not...but the details are too hazy.

Anyway, what were you doing before you decided to eat the glowberry, go on a vision quest, and then lose your memories of the quest? The sun's still in its morning phase, time's wasting.

Rolled 4 (1d100)

>>5514286

>You were going to hunt weak monsters in the canopy area to grind some EXP and get some Gene-Traces.
>You were going to hunt weak monsters on the swamp floor and look for an access point for Rocky, there's certainly nothing he can access in the branches of the forest canopy.
>You're...done for today. Go back to your hidey-hole and rest until tomorrow morning, simply enjoy the view.
>Other?

Rolled 77 (1d100)

>>5514286
>You were going to hunt weak monsters in the canopy area to grind some EXP and get some Gene-Traces.

Might as well get some more levels if we're going to venture to one of those weird trees.

Rolled 18 (1d100)

>>5514271
I just saw the google doc. " Cancerous Regeneration" And now we better at doing whatever it is Wolverine does! We've started the road of Deadpool.

>>5514292
>You were going to hunt weak monsters on the swamp floor and look for an access point for Rocky, there's certainly nothing he can access in the branches of the forest canopy
While we are down there lets find some materials for making vine rope and sticks. I'm hoping to make a fail net and latter for quicker movement. Just in case we gonna rush.

Thinking once we get some exp we'll need to boost reflexes for canopy. Tho our regen could help with any falls. Unless we already got the skills of a monkey.

>>5514292
>Observe the ecosystem before disturbing it. Look for the hidden predators, the cunning prey, the distribution of the flora. Get a sense of the ecosystem.

Rolled 14 (1d100)

>>5514292
>>5514344
Forgot my roll, again.

Rolled 23 (1d100)

>>5514292

>You were going to hunt weak monsters in the canopy area to grind some EXP and get some Gene-Traces
Wins it.

I-I'm not going to ask for a roll. You might crit again.

Rolled 97 (1d100)

>>5514388
Lets see.

Rolled 97 (1d100)

>>5514393
You guys are surely blessed by the dice. for the time being, anyway.

Writan'.

File: Polar Jungle.jpg (597 KB, 1280x726)

597 KB JPG

Rolled 50 (1d100)

>>5514292

That's right, you were going to look for some weak monsters for EXP, materials, and Gene-Traces. Come to think of it, you're Level 3 now and you haven't killed anything except 2 Scavs and a berry. That's not a bad Kills/Level ratio, hopefully it stays so easy!

You have a creeping suspicion that something either living around or about the tree you've been staying in is keeping local creatures away, by and large.

Acting on that suspicion, you note down a few landmarks and start to wander off in no direction in particular. Fortunately Rocksworth has some rudimentary mapping capabilities, and though they don't hold up great they ought to be enough for you to make your way back provided you don't get into anything too wild.

Gonna call it a night here actually. I'm pretty tired. Should be back tomorrow, happy New Year everybody!

>>5514435
Happy New Year! Sleep well.

So reading the description of Cancerous Regeneration, we'll want to bottle up a bit of radiation jelly for emergencies, we can basically get temp hp from rads, which is handy.

hello not broken sky, fancy meeting you here. my internet is real damn spotty at the moment, so I have significant doubts of being present for any voting.

I strongly recommend getting a flat piece of wood or light carapace we can strap to our back. itll serve as a raft if the flood comes again, and as a buffer shield until using that pipe results in an actual weapon skill

File: leggy squelch.jpg (39 KB, 800x440)

39 KB JPG

Rolled 96 (1d100)

>>5514435

You simply wander for a while through the twisting maze of branches, vines, ferns, and other plants too exotic for you to know their names. It's beautiful beyond belief, lit from above by the sun and with glowberries casting secondary shadows and casting everything in an orange-yellow hue. You make a point to pick up a few vines as you go, never know when you'll need rope in a place like this.

You cover a fair amount of distance, heading vaguely northwest. The forest changes somewhat as you do, there are more signs of living things disturbing the vegetation here and less bugs. You hear a hollow pitter-patter of footsteps on wood, and quickly jump from the highway branch you were on, hoisting yourself up onto a more realistically sized tree branch off the main path and hiding behind a dense clump of ferns growing off it.

You look back to see what caused the noise, and determine if it would be suitable prey.

It's a...caravan of worms? Two bulky armor-plated worms with legs are carrying a glowberry, both large enough to make the task look easy. The berry is lightly covered in a shroud of silk, and attached to them with much thicker individual lines. They are apparently unbothered by the radioactivity and heat it puts off, as they pitter-patter down the highway branch towards the Northwest.

File: Wooly Squelch.jpg (21 KB, 236x336)

21 KB JPG

Rolled 92 (1d100)

>>5514928

There's another, much smaller worm of a different species that was seemingly torn apart and has had its remains plastered onto the sticky silk shroud covering the berry. Three more of the same, but intact, crawl alongside the leggy worms. Two in front and one behind. They're much smaller than the armored worms carrying the berry, but they're covered in patchy growths of hair. They've also got several vestigial limbs emerging from their bodies at random points. It's quite disgusting looking, really...As they crawl along, the patchy growths leave small splotches of silky material on the wood every now and then.

It's not something you see every day, but it might present an opportunity for you. The smaller worms are gross for sure, but they don't seem like anything you can't handle...and the larger ones seem thoroughly leashes to their burden.

>Jump back onto the main branch and attack the convoy from behind using your pipe. You need more experience with your weapon.
>Stay in the lesser branches, and pick off the guards using your crossbow. Then see if you can do anything about the big ones up close.
>Follow the convoy from the side-branches and see where it's going.
>Other?

Rolled 98 (1d100)

>>5514933
While I would want follow for knowledge. I have no gauge of our power to the creatures here.

Set up a exit vine if needed. Otherwise >Jump back onto the main branch and attack the convoy from behind using your pipe. You need more experience with your weapon.

New Gene-traces:
>Berry [Charybdis Mega–Glowberry]
>Bio-Phosphorescence [Charybdis Mega-Glowberry]
>Radiotrophic Metabolism [Charybdis Mega-Glowberry]
>Neutron Breeder Tissues [Charybdis Mega-Glowberry]
>Radiation Blocking Tissues [Charybdis Mega-Glowberry]
We can actually just make little Berry lamps if we combine the berry form and the Bio-Phosphorence/Rad Blocking Tissue. That's nice and comfy.

>>5514933
>Jump back onto the main branch and attack the convoy from behind using your pipe. You need more experience with your weapon.
Pipe to break the exo-skeleton, knife to cut the squishy bits.

Rolled 6 (1d100)

>>5514959
>>5514945

>Attack them from behind!
Roll 1d100 Bo3 please.

Rolled 19 (1d100)

>>5514967

Rolled 64 (1d100)

>>5514967
Oh boy.

Rolled 23 (1d100)

>>5514933
>>5514967

You take your trusty pipe in one hand, and pull your combat knife out of its sheathe to hold it reverse-grip in the other then crouch down.

"Do you think you look cool? What a dork." Rocky's voice sounds from your shoulder.

Ignoring your companion, you activate the electroweave and leap over to the main branch behind the convoy.

>[HP 22/22]
>[CC 40/110]

As soon as you land the hairy worm to the rear turns towards you and you hear the two in front letting out breathy hisses. They don't have any eyes, must be sensing the vibrations.

You're glad you jumped a fair distance away rather than right on top of the rear guard, because it rushes you with surprising speed. Your reaction time has been bolstered significantly by your points in Corpus Manipulation and Fleshcrafting, but even with that you barely manage to get your knife up in time to intercept its leaping lunge.

But you do manage to catch its leap, the worm impaling itself on the blade of your combat knife. The momentum pushes you off balance and you fall onto your back, the worm seemingly doesn't even care about the knife in its gut and bites down on your arm with force enough to break bones.

>[HP 20/22]

Or it would be enough, if you weren't enhanced and wearing armor. Grinning, you drive your knife through the worm and into the wood below you as you push with your hips and roll on top of the creature. Pinned in place by your knife and your weight, the creature tries to let go of your arm and bite something more vital. You foil its attempts by jamming your fist that was holding the knife down its throat, and then proceed to beat the monster to death inelegantly with Tepellin's Teacher.

>[[ Sibyllan Defeated: Wooly Squelchwurm ]]

You're splattered with all manner of fluids. The wurm's blood is a dull orange color, and coats Tepellin's Teacher. The worm's was covered in a clear slime, and that's been smeared all over the wood around you and your legs. Evidently the silk came from these things too, and it's dripping in thick gooey white threads from the area where you stabbed your knife. Looks like you pierced whatever organ it uses to create the substance.

>[HP: 21/22]

You stand up just in time to see the other two woolworms hopping off the transporter ones, which have continued walking like they didn't even notice anything happening. You reach down to grab your knife and prepare for the new combatants to charge.

As you pick up your knife, the body of the worm comes up with it. Glued together by the white threads of silk.

>Goddammit! Shake the dead worm off your knife and then face the other two.
>That one wasn't that tough and could barely damage you anyway. Take the fight to them using the pipe.
>Forget it, you need to use Tepellin's Teacher to get weapons EXP anyway. Give ground as you fight defensively.
>Retreat to some of the other branches and pick one or both of these newcomers off with your crossbow. They probably can't follow you, right?
>Other?

Rolled 40 (1d100)

>>5515011

Aah, your CC is at 35/110. Not that it's a major component in your fights as of yet.

Rolled 28 (1d100)

>>5515011
I wonder if the glue is fully set maybe we can just throw the body and get the others stuck. Or even better find a solvent from the genes to remove it after.

Let's try jumping in the air and throwing the body. And during that quickly wrap a Vine around one of our arms to use as a shield if they try to glue us. If there's was time we could pry one the plates off the body and use the thread to glue some vines to make it impromptu Buckler.

Using this as a test to see if they see solely by vibration or not. Then we can continue fighting defensively while we get used to the enemy.

Rolled 52 (1d100)

>>5515027
We'll be going with this unless something else comes up in the next 30 minutes or so.

Gimme 1d100 again. It's not easy to prolong a fight against enemies trying to murder you.

Rolled 38 (1d100)

>>5515101
I'm good for it. Pretty sure we could beat a worm to death with another worm if we had to

Rolled 59 (1d100)

>>5515104
I hope to get a hulk as a partner/ minion. So we can do a fastball special.

Rolled 54 (1d100)

>>5515011

You need to find out the specific mechanics of how these things can detect you, both for this fight and any in the future. Before either of the newcomers can rush you, you activate electroweave again and jump into the air. From the apex of your jump throw your knife and the body attached to it at one of the new foes.

You watch them both closely the whole time. They twitch as you begin your leap and charge on the spot you jumped from. Even as they charge, the head of one follows your trajectory through the air. When you throw the corpse, the other tracks the body. The hairs along their bodies tremble as they do so.

Both you and the body land at practically the same time, and you're both set upon immediately. Tepellin's Teacher still feels somewhat awkward in your hands, unsurprising given that it's a arm-length of pipe with no adaptations towards being an actual weapon, and the wurm's attack is ferocious.

>[HP 19/22]
>[CC 50/110]

You manage to fend off most of its attempts to bite you by batting its head pre-emptively. What you can't block stops on your armored greatcoat, which reduces the damage drastically, but it's still painful and un-fun to get bitten. They say pain is a great teacher, and you'd have to agree. You keep dueling with the worm (who'd've ever thought that sentence would describe your life) and it clearly begins to feel the repeated strikes to the head from your parries. It's getting noticeably slower when it tries to attack you, or maybe you're just getting better? Probably both, can't tell now.

>[HP 20/22]

The creature's bites have left sticky globs of silk on you though, threatening to bundle you up or force you to shrug off the jacket. Worse yet, the other worm realizes that it's attacking a body rather than an enemy and turn towards you. It doesn't seem to have gotten tangled up by the silk at all, they must have something that keeps their silk from sticking to themselves.

>Finish off the current worm, and continue fighting defensively once the other comes for you.
>Finish them both off quickly, then go for the leggy worms that are actually making fairly good distance
>Defend against both worms at once. You doubt this'll be the only time you're in this situation and it'd be best to get used to it against weak mobs.
>Other?

I've changed my plan on how CC will work. No default regeneration of it during combat, slow regeneration outside of it. Maybe able to be modified with a mutation or Neuromancy skill, but the usual way will be with recovery items.

We'll go for a 20 minute turnaround on this. Roll 1d100 with your vote.

Rolled 48 (1d100)

>>5515158
That is to say, we'll tally votes within 20 minutes, or take the first one outside that window. We'll try to keep that pace and I'll make posts faster at least til this fight is done.

>>5515158
>Finish this one quickly, then fight the other defensively
2v1 is too much silk buildup. Does MC know how to whistle, preferably without hands? They should react differently to continuous vibration

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>5515168
Rolling to see if Sibyllan knows how to whistle
1 - Yes
2 - No

Rolled 58 (1d100)

>>5515158

You decide that 2v1 is too much for you at this point. Better finish this one off before the other gets over here.

You take the initiative in the fight and bat the worm's head from side to side in with a series of vicious swings. You don't think real worms have brains in their heads, and maybe these don't either, but it's definitely feeling the sustained beating you've been dishing out.

Damn does it feel good to finally have the thorough upper hand on something in this game. Oh right, you need to end this. A bit of sadistic inspiration takes you. The wurm lunges at you sluggishly once more and this time you catch it by the...throat? Body? Well anyway, you grip the thing near its mouth, and then pin it to the ground and rain a series of blows on it one-handed with Tepellin's Teacher.

Its head almost looks pathetic, getting gradually more battered and beaten with each swing of your pipe. It's letting out a dying hiss, and wrapping around you with the length you don't have control of.

Then an explosion of sticky silk come out of every patch of hair on its body and it's mouth. Its head is blown clean off by the force of it, which fortunately just causes the sticky goo to spread out all over the place and gives you the split second you need to place your hand over your eyes so you're not blinded.

>[[ Sibyllan Defeated: Wooly Squelchwurm ]]
>[Status: Slowed, Entangled]

You stand up and react quickly, managing to slough off most of the goop before it catches ahold of you properly. Seems like your legs were protected...probably that clear slime that rubbed off on them when you killed the first one.

For the same reason, the arm that you were using to strangle this one is mostly free of goop. Unfortunately it seems like your weapon is glued to your other hand, your jacket might get entangled in itself at any time, and now the other wurm is upon you. The leggy wurms are getting further away too. Take much longer and they'll get out of sight.

An idea occurs to you, and you attempt to whistle to distract the approaching squelchwurm. You try, but your lips have a light coating of silk and glue and you can't get the sound to come out. You're also panting from all the combat. Damn!

>Unequip your jacket so it can't get stuck together at a bad time, and continue fighting defensively.
>Fight defensively against the final squelchwurm. Especially if you keep your jacket on it can hardly damage you. You'll probably be able to unequip it if you get tangled up anyway, and this way if it spews too you won't get it all over something you can't take off.
>Keep your jacket on, finish this guy, and then go after the leggy wurms. They don't seem to have cared about this fight, but they're big so they have big guts and that probably means big EXP too.
>Unequip your jacket, finish this guy, and pursue the leggy wurms.

Rolled 9 (1d100)

>>5515190
>[HP 21/22]
By the by

Rolled 70 (1d100)

Fuck, I missed a bunch again. Guess that's what I get for sleeping in.

>>5515190
>Unequip your jacket, finish this guy, and pursue the leggy wurms.
>Try reequiping our jacket before pursuing the leggy worms to see if that removes the silk or if we'll have to remove it manually.
>Stop to pick up our knife before pursuing, we may need it to scrap off some silk.

Rolled 87 (1d100)

>>5515190
If I under stand the super regeneration. It will give us the radiation poisoning to work. If not, going hard with the jacket off and then rush the berry to heal is an option.

>Unequip your jacket, finish this guy, and pursue the leggy wurms.
I assume we can still use the jacket as cover for our other hand from the silk in a pinch.

>>5515209
To clarify, when I say unequip and reequip, I'm assuming we are putting it in our identifier. Obviously just taking it off and putting it on again like a normal person wouldn't magically remove glue.

>>5515209
I'm surprised at what I'm able to catch while working.

Also yeah if we can retrieve our knife that would be good. I'm assuming they might have some kind of oily skin that makes the silk slide off.

Rolled 96 (1d100)

>>5515212
It takes radiation poisoning, and activating the ability in order to engage the super-regen.

>>5515209
Locked, writan'.

>>5515190
Let gravity do the work
>Get a solid grip on it, jump high in the air, then land on its squishy head
Keep the armor on

Rolled 72 (1d100)

>>5515190

Alright, that's enough fooling around. You are covered in oil, sticky silk, and orange wurmblood and tired of fooling around.

You grab your UI and quickly set your greatcoat into the inventory there, then prepare to face the final wurm's charge. It performs a flying leap at you, just like the first did. It's just as fast as the first one too, but now you've settled into a flow.

Its mouth collides with the bent portion of Tepellin's Teacher midair, and it lets out a sort of "GAK" noise as all its momentum just makes it crumple against the enchanted steel. It falls on the ground in a bit of a heap. To its credit, it recovers quickly, but not quickly enough to avoid your series of strikes.

This time instead of the head you actually target its midsection around where you stabbed the first wurm. This gives it the opportunity to bite down on you, and it hurts MUCH more than it did when you had your greatcoat on...but there's still clearly a numbing effect applied and it frankly barely even registers compared to the pain of being teleported or consuming the glowberry.

>[HP 16/22]
>[HP 17/22]

You continue to beat its midsection until it's rendered flat and you see the glue seeping out through the holes your bludgeon has created in its hide from the repeated strikes. Don't want another silksplosion hindering your ability to pursue the larger prey. You give the creature's head a few quick, sharp smacks to get it to release its hold on your thigh...and then just step back out of it's range.

It attempts to pursue, but its midsection has leaked so much glue and been beaten into such a pulp that not even the clear slime can keep it from being cemented into place. It's not even a fight after that, just an unclean execution using something that's not even a weapon.

>[[ Sibyllan Defeated: Wooly Squelchwurm ]]
>[HP 19/22]

All in all, pretty good for your 3rd fight. Huge improvement from struggling for your life against a Scav while huddled in the back of a cryopod or whatever. You reach down towards the battered corpse to scrape some of the clear gel off its skin to use to free your knife. Unexpectedly as you do, a small mouth forms on your palm and then shoots out a short distance on fleshy extrusion and messily burrows into the corpse.

>Gene-Traces Acquired: [Hairy Overgrowth], [Silk Producing Organs 1/10], [Simple Form: Worm], [Air Sensing Whiskers 1/10]

Oh, shit! That must be the 'tools to acquire' part of the Symbiosis skill or whatever it said. You run over to the other two bodies and the process repeats, leaving the incremented traces at 3/10 each.

No time to dwell on it though, the Leggy Wurms are out of sight already, but you should be able to catch up if you're quick. You grab your knife and close the distance.

Rolled 76 (1d100)

>>5515236

It doesn't take long, but they've definitely been making good distance. You look around you as you run, and notice that there are sporadic patches of silk on the limb you're now on. A few of the clusters of giant leaves are pulled together with the substance too, and the area is darker than the rest of the forest. It takes a second to pinpoint why, then you realize that this area only has a few tiny glowberries lighting it from inside the canopy layer, and that the sun must be getting into its afternoon phase.

You don't see any more wurms yet though. It's clear you're getting into their home territory, but you're only on the very outskirts so far. Just in time you catch up to the large wurms, trundling along still lashed together with the berry between them. Totally indifferent to not having their guards and you just a bit behind them. You re-summon your greatcoat, checking to see if putting it in your inventory removed the glue and silk covering it.

The coating all over it has certainly been reduced, but it's not totally gone. You can also see a few rough spots where you got bit and the silk has faded away. Might be worth having the extra protection. Or it might slow you down too much for risky moves. Those legs are awfully big...they'd probably hurt to get hit by. On the other hand, they might be so big your coat would hardly matter.

>[Sibyllan]
>[HP 20/22]
>[CC 45/110]

You look at the two pickup truck sized wurms carrying the berry between them, and consider your course of action.

>Equip your greatcoat again
>Keep your greatcoat off

>They're getting closer to their home territory (and presumably more wurms) every second. Their movement is already restricted by carrying the berry, let's make them totally immobile by breaking their legs.
>No time to break their legs, they've got literally dozens of the things. Hop on top and attempt to smash their heads in through the armor plating.
>Dash ahead of them, and then try to shoot electro-shock bolts into their mouths. Close in for the kill afterwards.
>Lay down your satchel charge in front of them. There'll probably be enough left for you to loot afterwards. If they survive they'll certainly be weakened.
>Other?

Rolled 88 (1d100)

>>5515246
>Equip your greatcoat again

We haven't faced this variety of worm before from what I understand, as this is a different armoured variety. Though maybe I should go back and reread.

>Dash ahead of them, and then try to shoot electro-shock bolts into their mouths. Close in for the kill afterwards.

Take this fight more cautiously given we don't know what they can do and this is the creature actually in charge of carrying the glowberries at did moderate damage to us without any harm.

Don't waste the satchel charge on this fight unless we need to.

We'll have to climb a mega-tree soon after this, remember it took us a while to climb a tree enough for the flood to miss us.

>>5515253
You're actually still in the mega-tree canopy that stretches across the entire environment save for a few patchy areas right now. From what you could tell, these branches ought to be high enough to avoid the flood. Probably.

Who knows what else there is to worry about at night, though.

>>5515246
>Equip greatcoat
>Break a leg
>Take the leg back with you

The glowberry isn't the prize here, its monster bits. Also, if they aren't fighting back, itd be nice to test how the symbiosis mouths work on nonresisting targets.

>>5515261
I know, the point I was getting at is that I'm assuming they are tougher given that they can carry the glowberries without burning. I don't want to steal their food, I want to steal their lives for the EXP.

Rolled 26 (1d100)

>>5515253
I'll back it. We can get a drumstick after we are done.

Rolled 100 (1d100)

>>5515261
So you've got [Mutative Assimilation] that lets you acquire Gene-Traces by simple touch even against targets that are resisting. It doesn't catch always activate or catch all potential traces when it does from what you can gather though. Given that that's based on a whole skill, you doubt the mouths'll activate on partial samples.

If you guys had taken the 1st option in the glowberry trance it would've given you a forked version similar to how you have a fork off of regeneration now.

>>5515253
>>5515246
>Dash ahead, shoot'em, then mop up.

Writan'.

Gimme 1d100 Bo3 linked to this post please.

Rolled 67 (1d100)

>>5515279
Man, I must be hogging all the crits on the board.

Anyway, doesn't effect anything for now. Dice rolls please!

Rolled 46 (1d100)

>>5515279
Hmm.
>>5515281
Oh good, I was half expecting the two transport bugs to fuse together into one being an whoop our ass.